content Factory!
A Guide to Creating and Delivering the Content
Your Company Needs to Attract and Retain Great Customers

9"

At a Glance

11 Steps to Building a Successful Content Factory

1.

Get sharply focused. Establish
a content strategy by zeroing in
on just one customer segment to
start and doing everything you
can to understand your target
buyers in that segment and the
buyer journey they are on. Doing
so will give you a framework for
designing the content your buyers
need to help them through their
journey.

nity. Your content factory should
extend far beyond the marketing
team. Create a real-life community of freelancers, industry
influencers, and co-workers to
support your efforts and a virtual
community of fans, followers, and
subscribers, all of whom will help
your content factory succeed.

a full-time resource dedicated to
building your content factory with
the skills and experience necessary to develop your strategy and
manage your content creation
and delivery processes. Content
marketing cannot be an add-on
responsibility to someone’s existing role.

➥ Find out more in Chapter 3.

➥ Find out more in Chapter 6.

➥ Find out more in Chapter 2.

4. Create high-impact content.
Every piece of content you create
presents an opportunity to make
meaningful contact with your
target buyers and to get them to
move through their buying journey.
Take full advantage of that opportunity by creating high-impact content that is optimized for search,
reflects a deep understanding of
your buyers, provides value, demonstrates your brand aspirations,
drives conversions, and promotes
engagement and virality.

recycle. Find ways to re-use every
piece of content you create so
that you are maximizing your
return on investment. Make sure
that daily content gets recycled
into larger assets (e.g., eBooks,
webinars, and reports) and conversely that any large assets are
broken down into daily content.

➥ Find out more in Chapter 2.

➥ Find out more in Chapter 4.
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that every piece of content you
create has a clear call to action
that directs your target audience
to take an action designed to
help move them through the sales
funnel. Remember that every sale
will be the result of many much
smaller conversions throughout
the buying process.

➥ Find out more in Chapter 6.

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7. Amplify your content through

8. Establish a content rhythm.

multiple points of contact.
Create a plan for delivering
every piece of content to your
buyers through all of the best
distribution channels available for reaching them. This
includes your website and
other sites that you can control,
social media, direct marketing,
influencer marketing, campaigns, and more.

It’s impossible to build any
momentum if your content
comes out in dribs and drabs.
Avoid this problem by getting
into a regular and consistent
content publication schedule to
ensure that your content factory
drives real results.

➥ Find out more in Chapter 5.

10. Measure what you do. The only

11. Hold frequent retrospectives.

way to understand what’s working and what’s not is to track
and analyze key metrics. If your
content factory isn’t underpinned by a robust analytics
dashboard, it will be impossible
to glean the insights you need
to make improvements.

➥ Find out more in Chapter 7.

Your content team needs
to meet on a daily, weekly,
quarterly, and annual basis to
set strategic goals and priorities, assess the progress you
are making toward meeting
those goals, and to analyze your
results and adjust your strategy
as needed for every piece of
content you create.

➥ Find out more in Chapter 7.
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➥ Find out more in Chapter 7.

9. Institutionalize your content
factory. Experiment to find the
best processes for creating and
delivering your content, refining them over time. Document
best practices so that they can
easily be replicated and transferred on to others.

F oreword
Years ago, B2B marketing was primarily a paper-based or
in-person activity. Companies would devote large portions of
their marketing budgets to placing ads in industry publications or sending company delegates to trade shows, all with
the hope of promoting and growing their customer rosters
and bottom-line revenues. That strategy worked, largely
because those tactics were the best options available and
the most effective way to interact with large groups of prospects and buyers.
Today B2B marketing is a different animal. With the advent
of the Internet, e-mail, and social media, it’s now easier
than ever to find and engage customers and prospects,
whose appetite for online content is growing by the day.
At the same time, the digital evolution has also created a
unique challenge for marketers — while buyers are digesting
more content, they have also become far more discerning
about what they consume and from whom they consume it.
Ultimately, those changes have paved the way for a new B2B
marketing approach: content marketing.
At its most basic, content marketing is about creating highly
relevant content that appeals to your buyers’ biggest needs
and moves them down the path to purchase. In that way,
it’s not just a marketing best practice, but also the veritable
backbone of a successful go-to-market strategy. After all,
the more you are able to produce content that contextually
addresses each step in a buyer’s journey, the easier it will
be to drive conversions and to help your buyers actually buy,
or stay longer as customers, or even buy more than they
normally would.

In order to be successful and rise above the clutter, B2B
companies need laser focus on buyers’ pain points. They
need to approach their marketing much like a publishing
entity — developing a strategy and building a team that can
optimize and deliver content to the right contacts at the
right time in ways that have the greatest impact. Ultimately,
that is the core argument for building a content factory to
support your B2B business.
In “It Takes a Content Factory! A Guide to Creating and
Delivering the Content Your Company Needs to Attract and
Retain Great Customers,” OpenView lays out an easy-tofollow framework for constructing a content factory from the
ground up. It contains a high-level overview of the components necessary to build a content factory and is supported
by a rich appendix of additional resources designed to
supplement your efforts.
At the end of the day, B2B marketers simply need to ask
themselves this question: If content marketing is so critical
to your company’s ability to go to market, then why would
you manage it with reckless abandon? The answer is simple:
You shouldn’t.
Joe Pulizzi
Founder, Content Marketing Institute
Author, Epic Content Marketing
Senior Advisor, OpenView Venture Partners

It Takes a Content Factory! | 1

Chapt er 1 :

Want More Customers?
You Need a Content Factory!
All companies, whether they are big or small, and whether they sell ice cream cones or industry-leading software,
have at least one thing in common: They want more customers. Typically, a lot more customers. And, believe it
or not, for some companies accomplishing that goal is pretty easy.

Just look at Apple and Google. Their products are so innovative and compelling that pitching customers on their value proposition is almost unnecessary. Their products truly speak for themselves, so people talk about them, which leads to organic
customer acquisition.
Companies like Facebook and LinkedIn have products that sell themselves through distinctive social features. These types of
businesses are set up so that existing customers are compelled to sell their product to non-customers, creating a self-perpetuating user attraction machine. Just think about it. Who hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t asked people to join their networks on these social platforms?
If your company is in the same boat as any of these businesses, congratulations! New customers are probably beating down
your door, so sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor. If, however, your business isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t experiencing that kind of effortless
growth, you are left with two choices:

1.

Keep iterating your product until it is able to
generate tremendous growth on its own, like
the companies mentioned above.

2.

Focus on selling the product that you
already have to more customers.

Which option is

BETTER?

It Takes a Content Factory! | 3

You should always be iterating your product and trying to ensure that it addresses your customers’ pain points. The problem
is that it could take months or even years until you have iterated your way to a product that drives its own sales. How many
expansion-stage technology companies do you know with that kind of time?
Which leads us to your second choice: Selling your existing product to more customers. Unfortunately, this option isn’t foolproof
either. That’s because most companies really don’t do a very good job of selling their products. Why? Because rather than figure
out which sales and marketing tactics are most likely to attract and influence their best customers, most businesses simply
implement a variety of individual tactics and hope for the best. It’s certainly not the way to take control of a market niche.
To dominate your market, you need a well thought out go-to-market strategy with a holistic approach to winning customers.
And, as we will see, for that go-to-market strategy to be effective, it will need a lot of high-quality content at its foundation.

Why You Need Content to Fuel Your Go-to-Market Strategy
A company’s go-to-market strategy defines how it makes contact with prospects and customers, shepherding them through the
sales funnel to a purchase. The key to creating a successful strategy is focusing on a very specific set of prospective customers
and taking the time to fully understand them and their buyer journey, as well as the points within that process where they tend
to get stuck.
Once you have that understanding, you can develop a framework to
address each sticking point with the right content, turning them into
leverage points that actually help drive sales. To accomplish this,
however, your content needs to:
»» Be tailored to the context of your buyer’s specific situation
»» Effectively address his or her concerns
»» Contain the right conversion mechanisms to help move
that person to the next step in the buyer journey

“In today’s online world,
content marketing is marketing. Without great content to
tell your story and support
your business, it’s crazy-hard
to stand out – to differentiate
yourself from your competition. OpenView’s eBook
lays out a clear, accessible framework for building
the kind of in-house content team and sustainable
plan every business needs to connect with prospects and nurture them through the sales process
(and beyond).”
Ann Handley,
Chief Content Officer, Marketing Profs
It Takes a Content Factory! | 4

You also need to figure out how to best make contact with your buyers and deliver your content to them using the right combination of vehicles and programs. In other words, to go to market effectively, your content needs to not only be easily discoverable, but must also reach your prospects and customers even when they aren’t necessarily looking for it.
That may sound easy enough, but it’s rarely the case.
Let’s assume, for example, that there is more than one person involved in the buying process, or that you are targeting multiple
customer segments each with multiple buyers. Things suddenly become exponentially more complicated, because to address
multiple buyers across multiple segments at every stage of their buyer journeys, you are going to need to create and deliver a
considerable amount of content.
Factor in that you may also want to create content targeted at industry influencers, target partners, and indirect sales channels
to further influence your buyer, and you will quickly discover that you need to create and distribute a lot more content.
Essentially, the more customers you want to get, the more content you are going to need to create and deliver.
Building a finely tuned content factory can help you do exactly that.

Build a Content Factory, Build Your Business
A content factory is the infrastructure of writers and freelancers, editorial calendars and content strategies, content
delivery tactics, and content creation processes — among other things — that allows marketers to create and distribute the content they need to support their company’s go-to-market strategy. And, as with any factory, a content
factory requires the careful orchestration of those people, processes, and tools to operate efficiently.

“Every company needs good content to help generate and nurture leads and ultimately drive
sales. This eBook lays out the strategy and framework the OpenView team has spent
the past several years developing and sharing with its more than 20 portfolio companies around the country. Businesses that devote the time and
resources to implementing the best practices outlined in
this eBook will be better positioned to succeed in today’s
competitive market.”
Kevin Cain, Director of Content Strategy,
OpenView Venture Partners
It Takes a Content Factory! | 5

By building an in-house content factory, even small marketing teams can create the steady stream of high-quality content that
companies need to generate leads, nurture them at key points throughout the buying process with targeted messages that
address their concerns, and ultimately drive sales.
In the process, a content factory can also be beneficial by:
»» Establishing your company as a thought leader

»» Creating a personal connection to your customers

»» Building brand awareness

»» Fostering greater engagement with customers

»» Driving relevant traffic to your website

»» Promoting customer retention

»» Enabling sales with relevant information they need

“It Takes a Content Factory!” is designed to be a comprehensive guide for content marketers with a wide range of
experience. As such, depending on your needs, you may find it most useful to navigate to the particular sections
that are most relevant to you. To help get you oriented, below is a high-level overview of what you will find in the
rest of this eBook. In the chapters that follow, you will learn how to:
Chapter

2

Chapter

3

Chapter

4

Develop a strategy to align your content with your buyers and drive the array of conversions necessary to
reach a sale. That process starts with getting sharply focused on who your target buyers are and developing
a deep understanding of them and their buyer journeys. It also entails establishing the right conversion
goals, determining how to create content that will drive those conversions, and finding the right points of
contact for delivering it.

Assemble the team you need to operate your content factory. That includes the most important role for
running a content factory — a managing editor — as well as content creators and distributors. You will
also learn how you can leverage freelancers, industry influencers, and even your co-workers to help augment
your team.

Produce high-quality content that is optimized to get the greatest return on investment. Every piece of B2B
content needs six essential characteristics to be effective. You will find out, for example, how to optimize your
content for search engines and to demonstrate your deep understanding of your buyers. You will also learn
how to create content that aligns with your company’s brand aspirations, triggers conversions, and goes viral.
It Takes a Content Factory! | 6

Chapter

5

Chapter

6

Chapter

7

Deliver your content using a combination of vehicles and programs to ensure maximum amplification.
Every time you deliver a piece of content it is an opportunity to make contact with your buyers. Doing so
effectively requires a well-orchestrated and systematic approach that takes a variety of delivery vehicles and
programs into consideration.

Maximize conversions. The point of building a content factory is to create content that will drive a series of
conversions that ultimately result in a sale. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no small feat and takes careful consideration. You will
learn some of the best practices you can start using to begin getting more conversions.

Manage, measure, and continuously improve your content factory. Running a successful content factory
hinges on your ability to establish a consistent content rhythm, having the right tools in place, carefully
measuring your performance, and taking the time for regular retrospective meetings to analyze your results
so that you can make meaningful adjustments.

Chapter

Get started right away. Find out how to implement a quick and easy five-day plan to start bringing your
content factory to life by creating, delivering, and measuring the impact of your first piece of content.

Appendix

Take your content marketing to the next level. Already have your own content factory in place?
Then check out the Appendix for tips and best practices for experienced content marketers.
Throughout the eBook you will also find numerous references to the Appendix like this.
Simply click on them to be taken to the corresponding section in the Appendix.

8

To find
out more,
go to the
Appendix

Feeling overwhelmed? Don't panic.
Yes, building and operating a content factory is a significant undertaking that requires time, money, and resources.

However, if you are serious about attracting and retaining more customers and driving sales, establishing an
in-house content factory is one of the best ways to do so.
It Takes a Content Factory! | 7

C hapter 2 :

Developing an Effective
Content Strategy
In Chapter 1 we noted the important role that content plays
in helping your company go to market effectively, and how
building your own content factory will allow you to
create and deliver the content your company needs
to generate and nurture leads more efficiently.
The rest of this eBook will focus on helping you
create and optimize your content factory,
starting with its strategic framework.

Your company’s strategic framework is essentially the blueprint you will follow to build your content factory and it should be
constructed around six key elements:
5. A process for creating campaigns that align

To succeed in any form of marketing — particularly content marketing — you need sharp focus. It is impossible to market effectively to everyone, so concentrate your efforts where you think you will have the most success. That means focusing on just one
customer segment.
There are many techniques for segmenting your potential customers. One useful approach is to look at all of your customers
and then zero in on the best one. That customer could be a solid model for your target buyer.
Many B2B companies have multiple people involved in their buying process, so make sure that you understand all of the major
roles. Then, once you have identified your target buyer(s), do everything you can to understand that person so that you can find
other buyers just like them. For this eBook, we are simplifying the targets down to a single buyer, but make sure that you run
through this approach for each of your important buying roles.
Start with
one segment

Look for your best
customer in that segment

Make your best current
customer your target

It Takes a Content Factory! | 9

2. Understanding

the Context:
Buyer Personas and Buyer Journeys
Regardless of who your target is, it is going to be virtually impossible to create successful content until you understand the
context of that buyer’s situation. That means that in addition to knowing who your buyer is, you also need to understand what
that person cares about and what their journey to making a purchase looks like. You will also need to understand which points
throughout their buyer journey you need to influence in order to drive conversions and move the buyer through the sales funnel.
To create that kind of content, you will need to understand three things about your buyers:
»» Their motivations, pain points, and role in the buying process
»» Where along their buyer journey they are most likely to get stuck
»» How to get them unstuck and propel them forward by resolving their concerns
The way to develop that understanding is by creating buyer personas and taking the time to analyze and understand the
buyer journey.
Buyer personas are simply detailed descriptions of the decision-makers involved in a purchase. Creating them formalizes your
understanding of your buyers and what motivates them, which is essential for creating content that will resonate. Underscoring that point is a 2013 case study from Marketing Sherpa, which found that companies that incorporated buyer personas into
their content marketing strategies increased their B2B leads by 124 percent.1

To create a buyer persona, start by gathering some basic information from customer-facing colleagues and, if possible, interviewing your actual customers. You can also mine your company’s databases for valuable information.
Your objective is to identify some of your customers’ most important characteristics and to collect a variety of information, including:
»» The buyer’s title and role in the buying process
Are you targeting the CEO, a senior software engineer, or a member of the marketing team? Is that person a gatekeeper,
influencer, or champion? Is he a technical or economic decision-maker?

»» Behavioral information
What’s motivating the buyer? Is there a specific problem she faces that you can solve?
What are her concerns and pain points? What are her expectations? Which of her needs
have to be met to ensure a purchase?
»» Company information
How big is the company? What’s the industry? Where is it located?
»» Demographic information about the buyer
What department does the buyer sit in? What budget does he have? What are his primary
responsibilities?

To learn more
about buyer
personas, see
page 61 in
the Appendix.

Once you have gathered as much information as you can, synthesize the most pertinent details
into a short description like this:

Jane Doe is the VP of operations at a company with more than $10 million in annual revenue that
needs a better e-mail archiving solution. She finds her existing service frustrating because it is too
slow and unreliable. She will generally get involved in the research phase of the buying process and
is the final decision-maker. She is aware of our solution and that her pain points directly align with
our product’s core value proposition. While price is an important motivating factor when making a
purchase, she’s most concerned with whether the solution offers the functionality and ease of use
she’s looking for.

Completing this exercise for each of your target buyers will give you a much clearer understanding of them, resulting in valuable
insights into how to tailor your content to ensure that it resonates. The more human you make your personas, the better your
chance of creating content that will truly speak to them.
In addition to developing a buyer persona, you need to analyze the corresponding buyer journey or process that the buyer goes
through when deciding whether or not to make a purchase. To do so, map out the key stages within the process and try to
anticipate what will need to happen at each point to move the buyer to the next stage. It is also important to identify the points
throughout the journey where your buyers are likely to get stuck, and to figure out what messages you need to communicate to
address their concerns and get them unstuck. Doing so will allow you to turn those sticking points into leverage points.
It Takes a Content Factory! | 11

A very simplified five-stage buying process might look like this:

UNAWARE

AWARE

Interest

research

purchase

Leverage Points
For expansion-stage companies, the leverage points are usually at the awareness and research stages. These are crucial junctures where you should look to focus your efforts most to help improve sales. Many potential buyers may not be aware of your
company or your solution, while those doing research may be ready to make a purchase. By understanding the buyer journey as
well as where your buyers are likely to get stuck — and why — you can create the content necessary to address their concerns
and propel them through the buyer journey.

3. Setting

Clear Conversion Goals

Once you understand who your targets are, what they care about, and the steps along their buying journey, you need to decide
what actions you want them to take as a result of consuming your content. Ultimately you want to convert your target buyers
into paying customers, and the way to make that happen is by getting them to take a series of much smaller actions that will
collectively help propel them through the buyer journey. Each of those actions is a conversion, and you should set a series of
conversion goals for your target buyers based on the content you have delivered to them.
For example, your goal might be to get your target buyers to:
»» Open one of your e-mails

»» Fill out a contact form

»» Spend a certain amount of time
on your website

»» Sign up for your e-mail list or newsletter

»» Visit a specific number of pages
on your website

»» Engage in a live chat with one of your
customer service reps

»» Share your content with others

»» Sign up for a free trial

»» Download your latest eBook or case study

For a
comprehensive
list of potential
conversion goals,
see page 62
in the Appendix.

»» Watch one of your videos

It Takes a Content Factory! | 12

Although none of these conversions will necessarily result directly in a sale, they are all touch points with your targets that will
collectively help move them through the sales funnel over time. By establishing clear conversion goals, you not only map out
the series of actions that your target buyers might take before making a purchase, but you also create a framework for evaluating how effective your content is by measuring those conversions.
Later in this eBook, we will look at how to create content that drives conversions, the importance of tracking and analyzing
conversion metrics, and how incentives can be used to foster conversions.

4. Delivering

Your Content Through the Right Points of Contact

Another important aspect of your content strategy is deciding how you are going to make contact with your target buyers to
deliver your content. There are several ways this can happen:
»» You can contact them through e-mails, phone calls, text messages, tweets, etc.
»» They can contact you after finding you through search engines, online forums, advertisements, retargeting, etc.
»» Contact can be made through others, including other buyers, friends, colleagues, industry analysts, etc.
The numerous vehicles and programs that you can use to make contact — from your website to social media, to influencers
and relationship marketing — are outlined in detail in Chapter 5. At this stage, keep these key points in mind about how you
contact your targets:
»» Always consider your buyer and their context when selecting a method of contact
»» Your method of contact must be effective enough to drive the desired conversion
»» Less expensive forms of contact are often better than more expensive ones
»» Plan on needing multiple points of contact with your buyers using multiple contact vehicles and programs
»» The less work you have to do to make contact the better
As we will see, finding the right ways to make contact with your target buyers is just as important as creating content that
reflects your understanding of them.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 13

5. Aligning

Your Content, Conversion Goals,
and Points of Contact with Your Buyers
The next step in developing your content strategy is to figure out how to design campaigns by
aligning your contextual understanding of your buyers and their journey with your conversion
goals, the content you are going to create, and the points of contact you are going to use to
deliver your content. The best way to do this is by creating a matrix.

Here’s how to do so:
Create a Template for Your Matrix
In a spreadsheet, create separate tabs for each of the buyer personas you are targeting and list
the stages of each buyer’s journey across the x-axis of each tab. In the process, make note of the
stages of the buying process where you think there are leverage points that you want to focus on.

Highlight the Context
Below the stages of the buyer’s journey, list the context for each of your buyers that you identified
while creating your buyer personas. This is a good opportunity to remind yourself about your buyer’s pain points, needs, concerns, and motivations, all of which will dictate your content strategy.

Pick Your Points of Contact
Determine how you are going to deliver your content to your target buyers. Remember that you are likely going to need multiple
points of contact for every piece of content and that you need to select your method of contact based on the buyer’s context
and its effectiveness at driving the desired conversion.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 14

Identify Your Conversion Goals (and Incentives)
Next, determine what conversion goal you want to set at each stage of the buying process. You may also want to list the calls to
action you intend to use to drive the conversion as well as any incentives you may be using, such as giveaways. When you look
across your matrix, you should see a logical flow of conversion goals that, if completed, will guide your target buyers through
the buying process.

Select the Key Messaging and Format for Your Content
Decide which messages you need to communicate to address any sticking points that
could be preventing your target buyer from moving on to the next stage in the buying
process. A one- or two-line summary of the key points you need to communicate, along
with a hook that speaks to the value proposition of what you are selling and how it will
help buyers solve a problem, will give you great direction. Make sure that you also think
about which content formats are appropriate to use at each stage of the buyer journey.
For example, a short video may be ideal for engaging your target buyer at the awareness stage of the buying process, while a report or case study is probably better at the
research stage. Any past experience you have converting your target buyers with content
should be used to help inform this process.

For guidelines
around which types
of content to use at
various points in the
buyer journey,
see page 64.

Build Campaigns
Think of all of the information you have gathered thus far as the building blocks for designing
a campaign to drive conversions. You will need to decide which pieces of your top-performing
content to utilize, which points of contact to leverage, and which conversion goals you ultimately want to achieve. Other factors to consider include the length of your campaign (will it
span a certain time frame or number of steps in the buyer journey?) and how simple or complex you want to make it.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 15

Buyer Personas
and Their Journeys

Following these steps will help you set up the organized matrix you need to build and execute campaigns for
creating and delivering content that drives conversions. Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an example of what a matrix looks like:

Buyer 3

UNAWARE

AWARE

Interest

research

purchase

Buyer 2

UNAWARE

AWARE

Interest

research

purchase

Buyer 1

UNAWARE

AWARE

Interest

research

purchase

Campaign
Execution

Campaign
Design

CONTEXT
Conversion Goal
(and Incentive)

Conversion Goal
(and Incentive)

Conversion Goal
(and Incentive)

Conversion Goal
(and Incentive)

Conversion Goal
(and Incentive)

Points of Contact

Points of Contact

Points of Contact

Points of Contact

Points of Contact

Content Format
and Key Messages

Content Format
and Key Messages

Content Format
and Key Messages

Content Format
and Key Messages

Content Format
and Key Messages

Campaign 1

Campaign 2

Campaign 3

Campaign 4

Campaign 5

It Takes a Content Factory! | 16

6. Scaling

Your Operations to Maximize Your
Content Creation Efforts

The last major point to think about when developing your content strategy is how to tackle one of the biggest challenges many
B2B content marketers say they face: producing enough content to satisfy their buyers’ appetite.2 The way to do so is by building a plan for repurposing, repackaging, and recycling your content into your overall strategy. There are three fundamental
approaches that veteran content marketer Joe Chernov recommends:

Go from Big to Little
The true value of a large piece of content is not just the asset itself, but also all of the smaller pieces of content that you can
turn it into. For example, if you produce an eBook, its contents should also be used to supply material for a month’s worth of
tweets, a series of blog posts, a SlideShare upload, and several repurposed articles. Doing so will turn your content into a force
multiplier, allowing you to boost your content output without taxing your marketing resources.

Go From Little to Big
The same principle can be applied in reverse. If your company primarily produces short-form content (e.g., blog posts, articles,
and podcasts), take inventory of that content and look for common themes. You will likely find opportunities to repackage those
smaller pieces into a larger content resource such as a white paper or eBook that is more substantive and durable. The idea is to
identify content that you have already created and re-use or re-imagine it in a way that produces something new and valuable.

Become a Serial Content Marketer
When you create something remarkable that your audience truly values and shares, don’t stop there. Turn it into a series of
evergreen content that can be republished or recycled annually. For instance, imagine publishing a report on an industry trend
that elicits a strong response. Serialize that success by publishing other similar reports and updating and re-releasing them
annually.

What Do You Want to Achieve?
With a framework for thinking about your content factory in place, consider what you want your
content factory to achieve. What should your goals be and how will they support your company’s
overall marketing efforts and business objectives? Which parts of the sales funnel need to be optimized most? Maybe it’s getting people into the funnel by raising awareness, or propelling them
through the sales process with more efficient lead nurturing. Whatever it may be, clearly articulating your objectives will help give your content marketing program direction.
Now is also a good time to take stock of your existing content marketing and whether it can help
you meet your goals. Armed with an understanding of where your content marketing currently
stands, as well as a clear picture of where you ultimately want it to be, you can develop specific, actionable goals to help you bridge the gap. What those goals should be — and how to
best achieve them — will become increasingly clear throughout the pages that follow.

“Many companies approach content marketing from the publish first, ask ‘why’ later
mentality. This almost always ends up in a frustrating, ineffective, and fragmented
mess. The key to success with content marketing is starting with a smart strategy and
framework that builds a program focused on specific business value. It’s critical
that content is aligned with the emotional ebbs and flows of a buyer’s journey to
making a purchase in your favor. OpenView has provided an extraordinarily well
thought out approach to this. Don’t just download or share this eBook. Read it.
It will help you start your approach on the right foot.”

Robert Rose, Chief Strategist,
Content Marketing Institute

It Takes a Content Factory! | 18

C hapter 3 :

Assembling the
Right Content
Marketing Team
One of the biggest mistakes many expansion-stage companies make with
content marketing is failing to allocate the right resources to develop
a successful program. Rather than hire the right people, they add
content marketing onto their existing marketing team's list of
responsibilities. Doing so may seem pragmatic at first, but
it is ultimately a short-sighted and flawed approach. Not
only does it greatly reduce your chances of creating a
true value-add program, it also distracts existing
marketing team members from their other duties,
making them less effective overall.

Make no mistake about it, building a content factory is an investment, and that investment starts with hiring a dedicated, fulltime team for the job. The good news is that you can keep that team relatively small, provided that you augment it with the
support of freelancers and industry influencers, and get other people throughout your company engaged in the effort. To lead
that team, you must fill the one role that is absolutely essential for running an effective content factory: a managing editor.

Hiring a Managing Editor
If you can only hire one person to build your content factory, it needs to be a factory foreman who is capable of not only
developing a content strategy, but also marshaling and managing all of the resources necessary to execute it and measure its
success. At expansion-stage technology companies, that role is often best filled by a managing editor (other job titles that fill
similar roles include director of content marketing and VP of content).
Reporting to the CMO, an experienced managing editor will typically possess a combination of deep editorial and project management
expertise as well as a firm grasp of online marketing. He or she should be responsible for overseeing and optimizing your company’s
content creation and distribution processes, as well as ensuring the quality and timely publication of all of your content.
While impeccable writing and editing skills are essential, it’s important to note that the managing editor’s time should not be
spent creating content. Instead, he or she will be managing a team, setting your editorial agenda, removing any impediments that
are preventing your content factory from running smoothly, measuring its performance, and continually striving to improve it.
Some of the managing editor’s other responsibilities may include:
»» Creating and managing the company’s editorial calendar
»» Overseeing the creation of all content and ensuring that it is error free,
optimized, and of the highest quality
»» Managing other content team members
»» Building and managing a stable of freelancers
»» Ensuring that all content is of the highest quality and delivered on time
»» Managing an error free, SEO-optimized corporate blog site and regularly
contributing posts to it
»» Tracking and analyzing key metrics to help inform the strategy
Hiring the right managing editor is essential to the success of your content factory,
so make sure that you are finding the best person possible for the role.

For a sample
job description for
a managing editor,
see page 67 in the
Appendix.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 20

Content Creators and Content Distributors
In addition to a managing editor, you will need some additional factory workers to help with two key areas: content creation and
content distribution. While you can outsource these functions to freelancers, ideally they should be added as full-time employees
to support your content factory and managing editor.

1. Start by hiring a writer who is not only savvy about your industry, but also with online

marketing best practices. He or she will be your primary content creator and should
have a strong background in journalism or a related field, or have experience writing for
another company in your industry. More specifically, you will want to find someone who:
»» Already knows your industry or who can get up to speed quickly
»» Has excellent research and interviewing skills
»» Knows how to create a variety of different types of content that are
targeted to resonate with very specific audiences
»» Has proven experience creating content that is optimized for search engines
»» Is familiar with online marketing best practices
»» Understands how to capture a company’s voice and tone,
and how to accurately represent its brand

1"

Depending on how
much content you
plan to create, you
may find that you
need several writers
or that you need
to supplement the
writers you have with
freelance resources.
1"

2. In addition to a writer, you will also need someone who is sharply focused on delivering your content through a variety of
vehicles and programs. This person might be a social media specialist or a community manager and could be responsible for:
»» Managing content distribution through your website and other controlled sites,
social media, direct marketing, relationship marketing, and various paid channels
»» Building your company’s online community
»» Finding opportunities to partner with other organizations to cross-promote content
»» Creating and distributing your company’s e-newsletter
»» Working with industry influencers to help promote content
Ultimately, filling both of these roles will go a long way toward building a team that has the expertise and manpower necessary to
succeed. There are of course many other functions that you will need to run your content factory, from copyediting and proofreading to videography and graphic design. Rather than hire people to do all of those things, you are better off supplementing
your team with the help of good freelancers.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 21

Scaling the Team
To create a successful content factory, you will likely need some additional help to support
your team’s efforts. Here are three great options to start utilizing:

1. Leveraging Freelancers

For tips on how to
find and manage
freelancers,
see page 69 in the
Appendix.

Freelancers are a great and often budget-friendly way of scaling your content marketing team.
Good freelancers provide on-demand access to the additional resources you need without the
full cost and complexity of adding full-time staff. Another advantage of working with freelancers is that it allows you to tap into a much broader range of skill sets and expertise than you
may already have in-house, making it easier to produce a rich array of high-quality content.

2. Leveraging Industry Influencers
Another effective way to expand the scope of your content marketing team is to build relationships with industry influencers, i.e., the journalists, bloggers, consultants, industry analysts,
and others who influence your buyers’ decisions. The main benefits of influencer marketing
are threefold:
»» Get great content for free: Interview influencers in videos and podcasts, ask them to
contribute quotes to your white papers and reports, or even encourage them to contribute
original content on their own.

For tips on how to
engage and work
with influencers,
see page 72 in the
Appendix.

»» Build your brand: Getting an influencer to contribute to your content effectively puts their
seal of approval on it. Such endorsements can go a long way toward building credibility
and brand recognition with your target audience.
»» Expand your reach: Influencers who create content with you are likely to share that
content with their own followers, helping you to access a larger audience than you might
otherwise not be able to reach on your own.
Ultimately, influencer marketing can be a great way to accelerate and amplify your content
marketing efforts. The key is to make sure you are leveraging them correctly.
To learn more about influencer marketing, check out our eBook, “The Value of Influence:
The Ultimate Guide to Influence Marketing.”
It Takes a Content Factory! | 22

3. Leveraging Co-workers
Take a look around and you may discover that you are surrounded by thought leaders who you can interview to
create great content, amateur bloggers who you can get to write a post or two, or social media enthusiasts who
are happy to help promote your content online.
The point is that successful content marketing teams find allies across their companies to leverage. By taking
the time to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your co-workers, determining where their natural affinities
lie, and thinking about how to best leverage their time, it will be easier for you to produce and distribute
better content. The trick is getting people outside of the marketing team to jump on board the content
marketing bandwagon.

For tips on
getting your
co-workers engaged
in content marketing,
see page 74 in the
Appendix.

Building and Deploying a Roster of Content Talent
The key to building and managing a successful content marketing team isn’t having dozens of people on the payroll. It’s all
about making a handful of key hires, leveraging the right people within and outside of your organization, and ultimately putting
everyone’s individual skills and talents to use.
Doing so — rather than approaching content marketing as an add-on to your existing marketing team’s responsibilities — will allow
you to create a content factory that’s not only efficient, but that also yields true value for your business.

“Always remember that facts tell and stories sell. To convert your readers into buyers, your content not only has to be useful, but also connect brand themes and narratives with the topics your buyers are demanding most. To create high-impact
content, make sure that you not only understand your buyers, but also know how to engage them using a visually creative,
contrarian, or clever angle. Doing so will allow you to find the right mix of familiarity so that your readers can relate to the
problem you are solving, while also helping you to really connect with your audience on an emotional level.
Meaningful, not mechanical, content is where real impact happens.”
Lee Odden, CEO,
TopRank Online Marketing

It Takes a Content Factory! | 23

C hapter 4:

Creating High-Impact
Content that Drives Sales
With a content strategy and team in place, the time has come to start producing
some actual content. In order for that content to be effective, it has to be
optimized to have maximum impact. That means it has to have all of the
right parts and functionality built in to perform at its very best.

Content Creation Guides
Need help creating a specific type of
content? Check out OpenView’s content
creation guides to get step-by-step instructions on how to create white papers, case
studies, videos, webinars and more.

»» Drive conversions
»» Promote virality and engagement

access now

Let’s take a look at each of these points in more detail.

3"

Optimizing Your Content for Search Engines
First and foremost, your content is never going to have the desired impact if people
aren’t able to find it. As we will see in Chapter 5, one way of making content discovery easier for your target audience is by structuring your website to encourage
segmentation, which helps visitors find the content that’s relevant for them.
Of course, before any segmentation can occur, you need to get people to your website in the first place. One of the best ways to do that is to optimize all of the content you produce for search engines. Fundamentally, search engine optimization
(SEO) is about leveraging best practices for creating and offering your content to
search engines like Google or Bing. When you do so, you are making your content
readily available to people who are interested in and searching for that content.
When leveraged effectively, SEO is a tactic that can dramatically increase the
amount of organic traffic coming to your website. The challenge, however, is that
it’s as much of an art as it is a science. While there are no silver bullets — and
trial and error is an inevitable part of mastering SEO — there are best practices
that you can follow to help increase your chances of success.

If you think back to English class, you may recall some of the qualities of great content. It needs
to be well written, have the appropriate tone and style, and be clear, crisp, and concise. The reality, however, is that this and everything else you learned about content creation are merely table
stakes when it comes to creating high-impact B2B content. There are numerous other resources
that you can turn to for tips on writing better, including the writer’s checklist in the Appendix of
this eBook.

Go to the
writer’s checklist
on page 75.

Demonstrating That You Understand Your Buyer
In Chapter 2, we looked at the importance of understanding your buyers and their buyer journey, and how that and other
pertinent information can be mapped into a content matrix. The next step is translating all of those details into content that is
carefully crafted to resonate with your target buyers at a particular point in their buyer journey. To help you do that, put yourself
in your buyer’s shoes and ask yourself questions like these every time you create a piece of content:
»» Is the content appropriate given where your buyer is in the buyer journey?
»» Does it provide the specific information your buyer needs at that point in the journey?
»» Does it address a specific pain point or concern your buyer has right now?
»» Does it contain the right kinds of messages given the buyer’s role in the buying process?
»» Is it at the appropriate level of sophistication given the buyer’s background and knowledge?
»» Is it in the best format to get the buyer to consume it?
»» Does it contain conversion goals that are appropriate for the buyer’s stage in the buying process?
Taking a critical look at every piece of content you create across dimensions like these will help you to tailor it for a very specific audience. Doing so takes time, but it will dramatically increase your chances of creating something that resonates with
your target buyer and gets them to convert. The bottom line is that content that is on point and reflects that you have done your
homework about your buyer is going to be far more effective and will have a much greater chance of driving conversions.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 26

Providing Value
High-impact content is useful content. It may solve a particular problem that someone is facing or answer a question that
someone has. It may even just package up a bunch of information that people need so that it is all available in one place. Utility is an essential component of high-impact content, and as we will see later on in this eBook, creating useful content will also
help ensure that people share it with others.
Below are some basic concepts to keep in mind when creating your content to make sure that it provides real value to your
target audience:
»» Create how-to content that provides practical advice or step-by-step instructions
»» Offer thought leadership about what’s going on in your industry rather than just
information about your product or company
»» Share proprietary research, analysis, and insights that people won’t get anywhere else
»» Point people to valuable resources, even if they are not your own
»» Develop online assessments and other tools that people can use to evaluate something
and get feedback to help them improve
Ultimately, the more actionable and utilitarian your content is, the more useful it will be.

Representing Your Company's Brand
Aspirations
Your content is a very public reflection of your company that will leave an impression in the minds of the people who consume it. As such, it needs to accurately reflect how you want people to perceive your brand in the market.
The more people’s impressions align with the one you are trying to
create, the more you will be able to use your content to build your
company’s brand.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 27

For example, imagine that your company is trying to establish a reputation for being trustworthy, innovative, and secure. You can
leverage your content to help reinforce those brand aspirations by:
»» Sharing customer testimonials that underscore how the company has gained their trust
»» Not only explaining how your products and solutions are innovative,
but also finding an innovative way of doing so
»» Reiterating in your case studies, fact sheets, and videos key messages
around why your products and solutions are so secure
Most expansion-stage marketers fail in this regard, largely because their companies either don’t have defined brand aspirations,
or because they don’t understand what they are. The better you are at articulating your company’s brand aspirations, the easier
it will be to create content that aligns with those aspirations and leaves your audience with the impression of your brand that
you want them to have.

Driving Conversions
In Chapter 2 we noted that just as every content strategy needs to have conversion goals, every piece of content needs a call
to action that encourages your target buyers to take some kind of step to move them through the buying process. No matter
whether your conversion goal is to get someone to open your e-mail or to sign up for a free trial, for your content to have maximum impact you have to do everything you can to drive those conversions. There are a variety of different tactics that you can
use, all of which are outlined in Chapter 6 of this eBook.

Promoting Virality and Engagement
With the incredible success of business videos like this one from DollarShaveClub.com, which has garnered more than 11 million
views on YouTube since it was created in 2012, many content marketers aspire to going viral. It’s almost become the holy grail
of content marketing.
The reality is that there’s a lot of luck involved in the virality of content and it is impossible to predict what’s going to go viral
and what isn’t. If you are a B2B marketer for an expansion-stage technology company, you may also face the challenge of trying
to create viral content about topics that don’t inherently lend themselves to virality. When’s the last time you saw a viral video
about WAN optimization?

It Takes a Content Factory! | 28

While there’s no single recipe for creating viral content every time, there are a few strategies
and tactics that will help improve your chances for success no matter what you’re marketing,
including:
»» Designing your content to evoke an emotional response
»» Delivering content that provides real value

You can find out
more about each of
these tactics
on pages 83- 84
in the Appendix.

»» Incorporating features that facilitate engagement virality

8"

Are You Creating High-Impact Content that Excites
Your Audience?
As noted at the beginning of this chapter, anyone can create content. But there’s a
significant difference — in terms of both quality and impact — between general content
and content that’s created with context, relevance, and performance in mind. Ultimately,
the processes, tactics, and tips laid out in this chapter will help you produce the latter.
Now that we have covered the importance of developing high-impact content, the next
step is to begin delivering that content.
8"

It Takes a Content Factory! | 29

C hapter 5:

Making Contact Through
Content Delivery
Having created great content that is optimized for search, resonates with your target audience, fosters engagement
and conversions, and aligns with your brand aspirations, your next step is to determine how to best deliver that
content to amplify its effect. Your content distribution efforts are just as important as your content creation efforts
and require a similarly rigorous, strategic, and systematic approach.

In this chapter, we will look at the combination of content delivery vehicles and programs that you should be using to effectively
get your content in front of the right people at the right times. Importantly, you will learn not only what tactics to use, but also
how to scale your distribution strategy appropriately based on the particular content you are trying to promote.

Content Delivery Vehicles
There are eight main types of content delivery vehicles that you should be
considering to get your content out to your target audience:
1. Your company’s website
2. Other websites that
you can control

5. Other direct marketing
channels
6. Industry influencers

3. Social media channels

7. Industry partners

4. Your e-newsletter

8. Paid channels

Let’s take a closer look at each.

Your Company's Website
Your company’s website is one of the most important tools you have for delivering content to your customers, yet many companies fail to optimize their
websites for content delivery. As a result, site visitors are often left scratching
their heads about what they are supposed to do and wondering where they can
find the specific content they need.

“Marketers need to remember that of all the
places their content could live online, their
own website probably gets the least amount
of traffic. That’s why you need to embrace the
concept of the digital dandelion. Think of your
website as the stalk and your content as those
fuzzy seeds. Just like a dandelion, your content
starts on the stalk but should also be spread
far and wide, and repackaged, repurposed, and
redistributed in as many places
as possible.”
Jay Baer, Social Media
and Content Marketing
Strategist and New York
Times Best-Selling Author

Don’t fall into that trap. When anyone comes to your site, make it immediately clear what they need to do to quickly get to the
information they need. A great way to do this is by designing your homepage to encourage visitors to segment themselves in
some way, such as based on their industry, role in the buying process, or a particular challenge they face.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 31

Mashery, the world’s leading provider of API technology
and services, is a great example of this practice in action.
Upon arriving at the company’s homepage, visitors are
immediately encouraged to segment themselves based on
their role, in this case business managers, IT managers, and
developers.
Encouraging customer segmentation on your website allows
you to control each visitor’s experience and direct them to
the information that they will find most useful and engaging. In Mashery’s case, IT managers get directed to a page
with content that’s relevant to them, while developers get
directed to a different page with content designed to appeal
to their needs.
Another advantage of providing an immediate option to self-select is that it solves the issue of cluttered messaging on your
homepage. Rather than try to create a single message that delivers all things to all people, clear segmentation options allow you
to communicate that your company both understands and serves a visitor’s industry and/or pain points, and then provide the
appropriate, targeted messaging.
Additional Resources:
For more information on website content segmentation, see “Website Content Segmentation: Five Best Practices to Set You
Apart from the Competition.”

Other Websites You Can Control
While posting content to your company’s website is important, it will only take you so far. As an expansion-stage company, even if
all of your content is optimized for search engines and your website is set up for segmentation, chances are that your site isn’t a
destination in its own right and only garners a small fraction of its potential relevant traffic. So, it is important to look for opportunities to post your content on other, more highly trafficked content-hosting sites that allow you to set up your own accounts.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 32

Below are some best content-hosting sites that regularly draw huge numbers of visitors. Whether you set up a free generic account
or a paid branded one, you can immediately start posting your eBooks, white papers, podcasts, and other favorite content in places
where people have a greater chance of finding them.

Site

Overview

Best for Posting

With over 25 million users, DocStoc is a document and
resource-hosting site that allows you to post content in
a variety of formats.

Videos, articles, productivity tools

As Appleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best-known media player and content
library, iTunes is the best place to post audio content.

Podcasts

Described as the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest online library, Scribd
is a free community content-sharing site that has a
monthly audience of approximately 90 million readers.

Text-based content such as white
papers, case studies, and reports

The worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest community for sharing presentations, SlideShare garners more than 130 million page
views each month.

Visual content such as presentations and eBooks with a landscape
format

A platform for creating data visualizations and infographics, Visual.ly also allows you to post the infographics you have created.

Infographics

Posting content to any of these sites, or to the many others that exist, will not only give you access to much larger audiences,
but also create an opportunity to drive people back to your site where they can find even more content.
One way to help ensure that this happens is to only include a portion of a large piece of content on a content-hosting site. For
example, if you are publishing a 30-page eBook, you might consider posting the first 10 pages to SlideShare, and then including an 11th page with a button that viewers can click that takes them to your website to download the rest of the eBook. Someone who has read the first 10 pages of your eBook may very well take the time to download the rest of it from your site.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 33

Social Media Channels
The number of social networking sites has exploded in recent years, bringing hundreds of potential new marketing channels
onto the scene. With so many options, it’s easy to get distracted and waste time experimenting with new channels that may
never provide any real business value.
That’s why it is important to be extremely focused and to concentrate your efforts on the smallest number of channels that will
have the highest impact with your specific target audience. Typically, that will include some combination of the social networking sites listed below:

Facebook: Although more commonly used by B2C businesses, Facebook can still be a useful channel for B2B marketing, particularly for sharing more personal and visually engaging content such as blog posts, videos, and infographics. Stick to lighter, more entertaining content and leave your white papers, case studies, and reports for other
distribution channels.
Find out more: How to Use Facebook for Business

Google+: Although initially slow to take off, Google+ has evolved into a vibrant social network for sharing content.
Users can segment themselves into groups called communities based on their interests and needs, facilitating targeted content distribution. In addition, posting your content on Google+ has the added benefit of positively influencing your search results.
Find out more: Google Plus: A Guide for Everyone

LinkedIn: The world’s leading business networking site, LinkedIn is the perfect tool for sharing your content with
highly targeted audiences. In addition to promoting your content through status updates on your company’s page,
take advantage of the more than 1 million LinkedIn Groups, which segment users based on their industry, interests,
and needs. By joining the groups that are most relevant to your buyers, you gain access to a platform for distributing
your content to a targeted audience.
Find out more: LinkedIn Best Practices: Targeted Status Updates

It Takes a Content Factory! | 34

Pinterest: A top destination for visual content, companies like Disney, Starbucks, and Target use Pinterest to build
their brands. In addition to posting infographics and photos, consider posting visually engaging eBook covers or
slides. If you include images with each of your blog posts or articles (which you should), also post them to Pinterest,
creating a board that curates your company’s content in a visual fashion.
Find out more: The Pinterest for Business Guide

Twitter: Ideally suited to sharing content, success with Twitter hinges on your ability to be strategic and to maximize
the exposure of your tweets. Don’t just tweet a new piece of content once, but rather four times spaced eight hours
apart to increase visibility across time zones. If the content is evergreen, you should also preschedule up to 10 additional tweets to promote it over the following three months. Lastly, remember the 4-1-1 rule: tweet someone else’s
content four times and retweet another person once for every time you send a tweet promoting your own content.
Find out more: Twitter Best Practices

YouTube: The world’s second largest search engine (after Google) with 800 million visitors a month, YouTube is home
to a considerable amount of business-related content. Create a YouTube channel for your company and ensure that
every video you create is posted to it. In addition, be sure to create playlists to help organize your videos and include
calls to action at the end of each video, beckoning viewers to either watch another video or to visit your website.
Find out more: YouTube for Business: Top 10 Strategies and Best Practices

Ultimately your goal in using all of these sites is to raise brand awareness, foster engagement, develop a community,
and drive people to your website where they can consume your content.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 35

Your e-Newsletter
An e-newsletter is an essential component to any successful content delivery strategy. It is a simple and effective way to make
regular contact with your target audience, promote your content, drive website traffic, develop brand awareness, and encourage
engagement.
When developing your newsletter, strive to create one that:
»» Is distributed weekly
»» Delivers valuable, highly targeted content that’s relevant for your target audience
»» Contains engaging subject lines designed to ensure an open rate of at least 20 percent
»» Includes short, pithy abstracts of your content that are designed to get people to click through
to get the full content on your website
»» Is widely promoted so that your distribution list grows by at least 100 new subscribers every week
For a complete explanation of how to set up a successful newsletter, see OpenView’s “Quick Guide to Launching an E-mail
Newsletter” and this video from the Content Marketing Institute’s Joe Pulizzi entitled “E-mail Newsletters: Selecting Content
and Frequency.”

Direct Marketing Channels
Direct marketing used to take the form of direct mail campaigns, print newsletters, and catalogs. While those tactics are still
used to great effect in some cases, many marketers have turned to their online equivalents, including e-mail, text messages,
push notifications, and social media. Channels like these allow marketers to engage consumers in real time with personalized messages.
For more information on e-mail marketing, including best practices, see “E-mail Marketing: How to Push Send
and Grow Your Business.”

Industry Influencers
In Chapter 3, we mentioned industry influencers as a possible extension of your content marketing team.
Leveraged correctly, they are a valuable resource for content creation and also content distribution. If you have
built strong relationships with influencers, you can get them to share your content with their audiences, which
has two huge advantages: It creates an opportunity to get your content out to a new and potentially larger pool
of relevant prospects, and gives your content the added authority that comes from being shared by an industry
influencer.

For more information on working
with influencers,
see page 72 in the
Appendix.

Partners for Co-Marketing
In addition to working with industry influencers, consider looking for other individuals and organizations to partner with in a
content delivery exchange. For example, you may find opportunities to share another organization’s highly relevant content with
your audience, either through an e-mail blast or in your newsletter, in exchange for the other organization doing the same with a
piece of your content. Provided that the content is relevant to both sets of audiences and in no way undermines your own sales
efforts, this can be a quick and easy way of getting your content out in front of an expanded audience.

Paid Channels
Beyond the many free options listed above for delivering your content — which
typically cost you time, not money — there are a variety of paid channels that you
can utilize as well. These include various forms of advertising, including:
»» Content discovery platforms such as Outbrain, StumbleUpon, and Zemanta
»» Social media promotions such as LinkedIn and Facebook ads,
sponsored YouTube channels, and promoted tweets
»» Display and pay-per-click search ads

2"

The effectiveness of these and other paid
channels can vary greatly, so it is important
to do your homework before investing in any
of them. As noted in Chapter 2, cheaper
forms of content delivery are almost always
preferable to expensive ones.
2"

Campaigns
There is a huge array of different types of campaigns that you can run to deliver content designed to meet various objectives, such
as raising awareness, acquiring new customers, retaining existing customers, or improving public perception of your products and
services. For example, you might run a campaign to generate buzz around your company or your product by creating a promotional
video, writing a guest article on an industry influencer’s website, or posting banner ads to relevant websites in your industry.

Relationship Marketing
Relationship marketing is a long-term approach to communicating with your prospects that
is focused on customer retention rather than customer acquisition. It is about providing
your prospects and customers with highly relevant content that is tailored to their interests
and needs in an effort to create a more meaningful, personalized, and lasting experience.
By using a marketing automation tool such as Market, Act-On, or Pardot, you can track and
nurture individual leads by automatically delivering particular pieces of content based on
specific actions they have taken.

For a comprehensive list of types of
campaigns,
see page 85 in
the Appendix.

4"

For more information on relationship marketing, check out
“Relationship Marketing: View From the Top and What It
Really Takes To Get There.”
4"

It Takes a Content Factory! | 38

Creating a Comprehensive Content Delivery Strategy
Once you are familiar with all of the different ways that you can deliver your content, create a checklist like the one below that
outlines the steps you need to take to promote and distribute your content. Make sure that you can answer yes to each of these
questions before considering your work done:
»» Have you posted the content to your website?
»» Have you posted the content to other applicable
websites that you can control?
»» Have you included the content in your e-newsletter?
»» Have you shared the content socially via:
-- LinkedIn using relevant LinkedIn Groups?
-- Google+?
-- Twitter?
-- Facebook?
-- Pinterest?

»» Have you gotten any industry influencers to share
the content?
»» Have you been able to leverage any partners to
cross-promote the content?
»» Have you utilized the appropriate paid channels
to deliver the content?
»» Have you leveraged the content in your campaigns
and relationship marketing efforts?

While not every content delivery tactic is going to apply to every piece of content, it is important to have a standard list of
procedures to follow as appropriate for every piece of content. Bigger pieces of content will require more robust and strategic
content delivery, while smaller pieces won’t. The most important thing is that you take the time to properly market your content
to get the maximum amplification.

“One of the most important elements of content delivery is to test and iterate. Since there are countless
channels to choose from, maintain focus by starting small and always track and analyze your findings
before moving on. Just because you’re ‘doing what works’ doesn’t mean you’ve reached your maximum
potential. In fact, you’ve probably only scratched the surface.”
Morgan Burke, Content Marketing Specialist, OpenView Venture Partners

It Takes a Content Factory! | 39

C hapter 6 :

Creating Conversions to
Move Your Buyer Through
the Sales Funnel
Throughout this eBook, we have noted how important it is to have conversion goals for your content factory and
that every piece of content you create needs to contain a conversion mechanism that is designed to get your
buyers to take some kind of action. In this chapter, we will focus on the various tactics you can use to drive those
conversions. Ultimately, the best measure of a piece of contentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s effectiveness is whether or not people take a
desired action as a result of consuming it.

It is important to remember that there are all different kinds of conversions. Some will be big (like making a purchase) and others will be very small, such as opening an e-mail or visiting your website. The trick to getting people to make those big conversions is getting them to make a series of much smaller ones along the way. One of the smallest, but most important, conversions is getting them to join your community. Doing so will also help pave the way for bigger conversions further down the road.

Building a Community of Fans, Followers, and Subscribers
Every content factory needs an online community to support it. By converting your target audience into fans, followers, and subscribers, you are effectively earning the right to communicate with your targets directly. For that reason alone, it is important to
encourage your target audience to like your Facebook page, follow you on Twitter, join your LinkedIn Group and, perhaps most
importantly, sign up to receive your opt-in e-mails and e-newsletter.
Here are some tips and best practices to help get you started building your community:

1.

Start small
Focus on just one area at first. You will be much more successful concentrating your efforts on building a community on
Twitter, for example, than on trying to simultaneously build one on LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest. Build a successful community on one platform before tackling the next, and make sure to leverage your existing
community to help build others. Once you have built a good following on LinkedIn, for example, you can convert that
community into subscribers for your e-newsletter.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 41

2. Provide value
If you are sharing useful content (even if it isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t your own), people will be far more
inclined to join your community than if you are just making noise. Become a trusted
resource and over time your community will grow.

3. Actively engage your community
Pose questions, foster discussions, and always respond when people contact you. In
addition, try to forge personal connections with people and to bring everyone together so
that they feel like they are a part of a real community.

1"

Want to learn more
about how to build an
online community?
Listen to this podcast
with Mack Fogelson,
the founder and CEO
of Mack Web Solutions.
1"

4. Show some personality
It is important to be more than just a logo. Develop a voice for your company that helps
personify your business and lets people know that they are dealing with real people, not
just a company. Share photos of employees where appropriate and make it easy for your
audience to relate back to you.

5. Be patient
Building an online community is a marathon, not a sprint. It is going to take time, so keep
your expectations in check. The good news is that once you establish a community, as
long as you continue to nurture it, it will continue to grow.

No matter where or how you start, building a community of fans, followers, and
subscribers will go a long way toward helping you drive more conversions. Once you are
able to directly contact your target audience, getting them to do other things is only one
step away. Of course, you are going to have to give them a reason to take that step.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 42

How to Get Your Audience to Convert
There are many different ways to encourage and incentivize your target audience to convert. Below are some of the most
common ones that you should be considering:

1.

Grab Your Audience's Attention with Engaging Headlines and Images
We live in an information age and are bombarded with content every day. As a result, we have become adept at quickly
assessing — often just in the blink of an eye — which pieces of content we are going to consume and which pieces we
will ignore.
Your job as a content marketer is to give your target audience plenty of reasons to consume your content, starting with
two of the things they use most often to make these rapid decisions: headlines and images. Pay close attention to both
and you will dramatically increase the chances of people clicking on your links, opening your e-mails, and downloading
your eBooks and reports. Let’s start by taking a look at headlines and their e-mail equivalents, subject lines.
To be effective, always make sure that they are:
»» Concise: Get to the point…fast. Lengthy headlines and subject lines cannot be processed quickly and, as a result,
often get overlooked. Many e-mail marketers suggest limiting subject lines to less than 50 characters. Headlines,
while a bit more forgiving, should also be kept as short as possible.
»» Timely: Headlines and subject lines can be particularly effective when they are tied back to news or current
events. Be cautious when using this tactic, however, and only select news that cannot in any way be construed
as offensive.
»» Informative: With just a few words you have to convey to your audience what your content is all about. Vague
headlines are easy to ignore and, even if they do convert someone, can frustrate audiences who expected to find
something different than what your content actually delivers.
»» Compelling: You have to make your audience want to read your content. Mechanical or uninspired headlines just
won’t do. Use active verbs, humor, and wit to engage your audience and get their attention.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 43

Many of the same rules apply to the images you use with your content. You want
an image that’s visually engaging and that directly ties back to your content, thus
further reinforcing what the audience can expect after clicking through. Stock
photos tend to feel like stock photos, so take care to pick images that are unique,
stand out, and that you would respond to if you were the target audience.
Most important, make sure that you are using images wherever you can to help
capture people’s attention. Include them in your blog posts and on your landing pages, and incorporate them in your reports, case studies, and white papers.
Create attractive covers for your eBooks and use thumbnails of the covers to help
advertise them. A great image can go a long way toward piquing your target audience’s interest and getting them to take the time to consume your content.

2. Incentivize Your Audience
Never underestimate the power of incentivizing your target audience. Small rewards, such as a free trial of your service
or a free sample of your product, can go a long way toward motivating people to convert. You can even take things a step
further by offering gifts such as a free T-shirt (which can be incredibly effective, particularly if you are targeting a tech
community) or a gift card. While there is an expense associated with this approach, smart campaigns can be created that
drive conversions and make the investment well worth it. Also consider running contests or raffles, both of which can be
extremely effective.

3. Create Landing Pages that Promote Specific Conversions
Another important tactic that will help you maximize conversions is developing targeted landing pages that draw people
in and get them to convert. The advantage of driving traffic to specific landing pages, rather than just your homepage,
is that it allows you to focus visitors’ attention on one specific piece of content and corresponding conversion goal,
rather than the many that may live on your homepage.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 44

To make your landing pages effective, always make sure that they:
»» Have clear and concise headlines
»» Align with the messaging you used elsewhere to drive people
to the page
»» Incorporate testimonials or other validation from third parties
»» Have a single call to action that stands out prominently above
the fold so people don’t have to scroll to find it
»» Aren’t cluttered with other links or with too much text

3"

Experiment with different
landing pages to see what your
target audience responds to and
optimize based on your findings.
Even small adjustments can
make a big difference.
3"

»» Contain relevant images
»» Are highly focused so that the sole objective is to get one conversion
»» Ask for the data you are most interested in collecting in exchange for a piece of content

Additional Resources:
For more information about how to optimize your content for conversions, check out these resources:
»» E-mail Marketing Tactics: Do Your Messages Measure Up?
»» Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions
»» 20 Critical Do’s and Don’ts for Clickable Calls to Action
»» The Anatomy of a Perfect Landing Page

4. Develop Compelling Calls to Action that Guide Buyers to a Next Step
Once someone opens your e-mail or clicks on a page of your website, you need to make it clear to them what they are supposed to do next with a compelling, well-placed call to action (CTA). CTAs are the mechanisms that drive conversions, and
they will vary depending on the piece of content associated with them and their intended purpose in the buying process.
Top of the funnel content, such as blog posts and videos, for example, might contain simple CTAs directing the audience
to additional related content where they can learn more. Content that is intended for a later stage in the buying process,
such as a case study, might have a CTA encouraging the user to download a free trial. It’s important to make sure that
your CTAs (and conversion goals) are appropriate for the piece of content and the stage of the buying process they are
intended to serve.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 45

When adding CTAs to your content, keep in mind that they need to:
»» Clearly and concisely articulate the value the user will get from taking the action
»» Be prominently placed within the content and visually compelling so that they stand out and catch people’s eye
»» Accurately portray what the user will get
»» Offer something of value
In addition, avoid crowding pages with multiple CTAs. Have one primary CTA per page and, if needed, a secondary one.
Additional Resources:
For more information on creating effective CTAs, check out “An Introduction to Effective Calls-to-Action.”

Conversions are your content factory's ultimate output, and you should be doing everything you can to make sure that
your content is optimized for and aligned with campaigns to drive the conversions you need to get a sale.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 46

C hapter 7:

Managing and
Measuring
Your Content
Factory
By now you should have a firm understanding of how to
build a content factory from the ground up. This chapter
will provide some guidance to help you successfully
manage that content factory and measure its results.
It explains the importance of establishing a consistent
rhythm for your content factory and outlines some of the
essential tools to help make that possible. It also provides
a framework that you can use for measuring how well
your content factory is working and for analyzing your
results on a regular basis so that you can make continuous
improvements.

Establishing a Content Rhythm
One of the biggest mistakes many companies make when they try to build a content factory is that they fail to get into a regular
rhythm for creating and distributing their content. As a result, their content comes out in dribs and drabs, making it impossible
to build momentum, scale the program, and establish the consistency and frequency that a content factory needs to produce
steady results.
That’s why as you are building your content factory, it is important to think about the following points:
»» Be consistent. Put a stake in the ground and commit to a rhythm that you are confident you can deliver consistently, even
if it is just one blog post a week.
»» Accelerate over time. Once you have mastered that rhythm, increase the tempo by getting to two or three blog posts a
week. As soon as that becomes routine, add something else into the mix, such as a monthly report or a quarterly eBook.
The idea is to make creating each piece of content so routine that you get better and faster at doing it. Eventually, you will
find that you are able to add new things to your rhythm.
»» Focus on the right content types. As you are finding your rhythm, try to determine what kinds of content you need to
deliver at what frequency to get the best result. That will take some experimentation and your rhythm will invariably evolve
over time.
»» Define your rhythm. Ultimately, strive to get into a daily, weekly, and quarterly rhythm so that you have content coming out
at each of those intervals.
No matter where you are in the evolution of your content factory, the key is to establish a framework for the types of content you
are going to create at defined intervals and then ensure that your content factory is optimized to maintain that rhythm. This will
yield much better results than creating and distributing your content on an ad hoc, inconsistent basis. Strive to get to the point
where your content factory is producing and delivering one high-impact piece of content every day.
The best way to do this is by establishing
very efficient and streamlined processes for
developing and distributing your content.
The next section contains more information
on creating process documents and other
tools that you will need to help you institutionalize your content marketing activities.

To access any of OpenView’s content,
visit our blog and community site.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 48

DAILY

WEEKLY

Quarterly

1 article or blog post

1 podcast or video
2 pieces of curated content

1 eBook
1 report
1 case study

1 article
2-3 blog posts

1 podcast
3 videos
5 pieces of curated content

2 eBooks
2 reports
1 case study
1 infographic
5 webinars

After getting established, a young
content factoryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s content rhythm
might look like this:

As you get more experience,
you will be able to take on
more. At OpenView, for example,
our content rhythm looks like this:

Building the Tools You Need to Run Your Content Factory
There are several tools that you can use to help you manage your content rhythm and ensure that you are creating
great content. These include the following:

1.

An editorial calendar
By providing a framework for developing and releasing content, an editorial calendar
can help you visualize how you are going to execute your content strategy. It will also
help you stay focused so that you can both create new content and update existing
content on a regular basis for each of your buyers at every point of the buying process.
Importantly, your editorial calendar is also your primary tool for communicating your
content agenda with the rest of your organization. It provides transparency into what
you are doing in a way that everyone will be able to understand.

To find out
more about
editorial calendars,
including how to set
one up, see page 90
in the Appendix.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 49

2. A content creation calendar
In addition to an editorial calendar, it is helpful to maintain a document that tracks
the creation of individual pieces of content. Whereas an editorial calendar gives you a
high-level overview of what’s being published when, a content creation document will
allow you to track the work being done on individual pieces of content so that you stay
better organized. For example, in this document you will note when drafts of content
are due from your freelancers, whether or not an eBook has been proofread, or who
still needs to review your next white paper before it can be published.

To find out more
about content
creation calendars,
including how to set
one up, see page 92
in the Appendix.

3. A content marketing style guide
A company’s content — including its website, blogs, collateral, thought leadership,
and social media — can help create and nurture a strong brand if it is clean, crisp,
and consistent. Conversely, if your content lacks these characteristics, it can quickly
undermine your brand. That’s why every company needs a content marketing style
guide. Good style guides document and standardize everything, from the unique terminology a company uses to describe itself to its spelling and punctuation preferences.
The style guide becomes a basic road map that everyone can follow to help create
consistent, high-quality content.

To find out more
about content
marketing style guides,
including how to create
one, see page 93
in the Appendix.

4. Process documents
Every time that you establish a process for your content factory, whether it’s how to create a case study or how to promote
a big piece of content through social media, it is important to document that process. This not only institutionalizes the
process, creating a standard that can easily be replicated over and over, but it also ensures the effective transfer of knowledge so that new employees, freelancers, and interns can all quickly get up to speed on how things are done.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 50

Measuring Your Content Factory and Analyzing the Results
Another critical aspect of managing your content factory is tracking and analyzing your results. Your content factory isn’t going
to be perfect from the moment you build it. At first, you may struggle to consistently maintain your desired content rhythm and
to get every piece of content out through all of the possible vehicles and programs that you would like. And, even after you master these things, your results will vary in terms of the impact your content has. The important thing is to hold yourself accountable to your goals, to measure the impact of your efforts, and to make ongoing adjustments along the way based on what you
learn so that you are continuously able to improve.
That’s where metrics come in. Initially you should track them across four areas:

Content creation
Content delivery
Impressions Conversions
Let’s break down each of these.
For content creation, you are simply tracking whether or not you were able to create all
of the content that you have committed to producing as part of your content rhythm for
a given period. Tracking this information (which can be as simple as saying “yes, we
met our content commitments this week” or “no, we didn’t”) puts a spotlight on your
ability to consistently create all of the content on your editorial calendar. That helps to
surface other issues. If you are not consistently meeting your content commitments,
it could indicate that:
»» You don’t have the right resources in place
»» Your processes are inefficient
»» You are getting distracted by other things
»» You are not leveraging freelancers, influencers, or your co-workers effectively

“As a content marketer, your daily retrospective is the most important part
of your day. It offers you the chance to
look back on the previous day’s content and ask yourself what went well,
what didn’t go well, and what can you
do better. Doing so will ensure you’re
not just going through the motions,
but consistently learning from your
efforts and adapting your approach
accordingly. That’s the only true way
to improve and to take your content
marketing to the next level.”
Jonathan Crowe,
Managing Editor,
OpenView Venture
Partners

»» Your goals are too aggressive
The bottom line is that until you are able to consistently hit your content commitments, you are not going to have a successful content factory.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 51

Next, start tracking your content delivery. By using the checklist provided in Chapter 5, you can assess whether or not you did everything
possible to get a piece of content out. If you did, you get credit for it, if
not you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. The goal, of course, is to ensure that you are maximizing
the amplification of each piece of content by delivering it to all of the
appropriate channels.
After that, begin measuring your total impressions for a sense of the reach
of your content. Measure how many people were exposed to your tweets,
LinkedIn posts, and Facebook advertisements. How many times did people
see your content come up in the results of their online searches? There are
numerous platforms that you can use to measure your total impressions.
Spreadfast, for example, can help you measure your total impressions
across social media.
In addition, you will want to measure conversions. How often did the
people who consumed your content take a desired action as a result?
Since every piece of content you create should have a conversion goal
associated with it, it can quickly become incredibly complex to measure
every conversion. So instead, focus on your biggest conversion goals,
such as getting people to sign up for your newsletter, download a free
trial, or fill out a form. Conversion rates vary considerably based on
industry, but tend to hover between 2 and 3 percent on average. You
should aim for a conversion rate of 5 percent or higher if you are creating
customized landing pages for specific target audiences.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 52

Besides these four categories, you should also pay attention to some other standard metrics that pertain to your
website overall, such as:

Unique
Visitors

The best indication of your siteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s overall traffic, unique visitors refers to the number of individuals who visit
your website during a given period, where each visitor is only counted once. This number will vary dramatically depending on the size of your company, industry, and, of course, the amount of content you are
producing.

Page
Views

The total number of individual pages that your visitors click on during a given period. If your page views are
higher than your unique visitors, that may indicate that your audience finds your content engaging because
individuals are visiting multiple pages.

Search
Engine
Traffic

The amount of traffic being referred to your site by search engines such as Google or Bing. This number will
give you a clear indication of how effective you are at optimizing your content for search.

Social
Media
Traffic

The amount of traffic being referred to your site through social media, which will give you insights into how
effectively you are distributing your content and how popular that content is among your target audience.

Bounce
Rate

The percentage of visitors who come to your site and then immediately leave before clicking on any other
pages. Aim for a bounce rate below 40 percent. If itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s higher, it may indicate that visitors to your site donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t
like what they see and are leaving immediately.

All of this information can be gathered using a Web analytics tool like Google Analytics (see this link for information on how
to set up a Google Analytics account for your website). It can then be tracked into a simple weekly dashboard that you create
using an Excel spreadsheet like the one on the following page.

Total Social Traffic (Target: 1,750)
Average Bounce Rate (Target: <65%)

1,261

1,730

2,135

63.91%

63.35%

64.53%

It Takes a Content Factory! | 54

Over time, you can dig deeper into your Web analytics data and expand your dashboard to track a variety of
other useful metrics. For example, you may want to measure the:
»» Amount of engagement your content is generating in terms of comments
and social shares
»» Open and click-through rates of your e-mails and e-newsletters
»» Amount of traffic you are getting from individual social channels, content-hosting sites,
guest blog posts, advertisements, etc.
»» Number of inbound links back to your site
To be really in tune with how your content factory is performing, you need to analyze your key
metrics at least once a week and meet as a team to discuss them and how you are going to
adjust your strategy as a result.

For a sample
dashboard to help
you track and measure
individual pieces of
content, see page 95
in the Appendix.

Holding Frequent Retrospectives
In addition to tracking key metrics, it’s important to discuss them with your team on a regular
basis and to look at how your content factory is performing overall. These retrospective meetings should occur on an annual, quarterly, weekly, and daily basis. Below is a framework for approaching each one.
»» Annual Retrospectives
Take a high-level look at your content factory’s results for the past 12 months and discuss and set plans for the coming year.
This is a time to celebrate your successes, reflect on key learnings, and get reinvigorated to meet a whole new set of goals.
»» Quarterly Retrospectives
Talk with your team about how it performed against its quarterly goals and whether or not it is on track to meet its annual
goals. Celebrate successes, identify and talk through learnings, and make any necessary adjustments to start off the next
quarter in the best possible position.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 55

»» Weekly Retrospectives
Review your metrics dashboard, talk about what worked that week and what didn’t, and
come up with ideas for how you plan to adjust your approach the following week as a result.
Weekly retrospective meetings also present an opportunity to talk about upcoming content
that you have planned for the editorial calendar so that you can start preparing a content
delivery strategy. You should also use these meetings to gauge progress against your quarterly goals and determine what needs to happen to ensure that you stay on target.
»» Daily Retrospectives
As soon as you get into a daily content creation rhythm, make sure that you also get into
the habit of holding short, daily retrospectives to talk about it. Lasting no more than 15
minutes, your daily retrospective meeting is an opportunity to review how the previous
day’s piece of content performed and to discuss how to most effectively deliver today’s
piece of content to your target audience. Meeting daily will make a tremendous difference
in the impact you get with each piece of content, from the amount of engagement
it receives, to the conversions it drives.

To learn about retrospectives,
see “Get Better Faster:
The Ultimate Guide to
Retrospective Meetings.”

Establishing and sticking to a content rhythm, developing the right tools and processes, and holding frequent retrospectives to look at how your content factory is performing will all make a huge difference in the success of your
content factory. While doing all of this takes tremendous discipline, the payoff will be clear in the results that you
begin seeing.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 56

C hapter 8 :

Start Having Impact
in Just One Week
By now, your head should be overflowing with ideas about how to build your own content factory. And while there
are many factors that you will need to consider to ensure its success, there really is just one golden rule to follow:
Start doing something right away!
All too often, people get hung up on details and spend weeks or even months trying to come up with a
comprehensive plan and approach. It's much better to just start doing something so that you can evaluate its
impact and make adjustments as a result.
With that in mind, what follows is a plan to help you bring your content factory to life in just one week. Will it
be perfect? Absolutely not. But it will be a starting point, and from there you can use the resources provided
throughout this eBook to make improvements.

Day 1: Pick a target
Consider all of your potential buyers and pick just one to be your initial target. It may not be the best one (yet), but
that’s OK. Remember, the idea is just to start doing something to help you set up a very simplified content factory.
Once you have a target buyer, learn as much as you can about the person in a couple of hours by talking to
your colleagues in sales or mining your CRM tools. Your job for the day will be done when you understand any
pain points your target is facing.

Day 2: Create a simple piece of content
Since you are trying to make an immediate impact, stick to creating a fairly basic piece of content such as a
blog post or an article that can be created in just one day. Brainstorm some ideas about what information you
might include to address one of your target’s pain points.
Do whatever research is necessary, including talking to in-house subject matter experts, and start working on a
draft. By the end of the day, your goal is to have a solid first draft that is written specifically for your target and
speaks to one of his or her concerns. Make sure to include a simple conversion goal in the draft, such as getting your target to click through to another relevant page on your website.

Day 3: Get feedback and iterate
On the third day, share your draft with others — ideally your in-house subject matter experts and customer-facing colleagues — to get some feedback. Find out if they think it is going to resonate with your target audience
and make adjustments as needed. Now is also the time to make sure that your content has been optimized to
have maximum impact (see Chapter 4).

It Takes a Content Factory! | 58

Day 4: Publish and distribute the content
As soon as you arrive at work, get your content published on your website and then do everything you can to
push it out. Promote it on your social accounts, try to engage an industry influencer in an online discussion
about it, encourage comments, and look for reposting opportunities. If the content is really good, you may also
want to e-mail it to everyone in your customer and/or prospect database.

Day 5: Measure results and look for insights
On the last day of the week, start measuring the impact of your efforts. Use Google Analytics to find out how
many people viewed the content and how many performed the desired conversion. Look to see how many comments your content received, how many times it was shared socially, or if anyone linked to it on their site. Your
overall results might be minimal, but thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s OK. You have successfully produced and distributed a thoughtful
piece of content in just one week, which is a great accomplishment and gives you a baseline from which to measure all of your future efforts. Take what you learned and apply it when you do this all over the following week.

Remember, the most important thing to do is get started!

So what are you waiting for?

It Takes a Content Factory! | 59

End Note
Executing a content marketing initiative is one thing. Executing a content marketing initiative that’s backed by a high-performing content factory is quite another. The latter will ensure that you not only produce the right content in the right context at the
right time, but also that you’re able to deliver that content to the right people in exactly the right places to support your go-tomarket strategy.
Unfortunately, far too few B2B marketers approach content marketing that way. Maybe they develop a corporate blog, publish
a few case studies, or create an eBook, but they do it all independently and without considering the specific impact that they
hope to create with each piece of content. That’s a very haphazard way to manage a very critical component of your go-to-market strategy.
By contrast, a content factory brings much-needed structure to a B2B company’s content marketing operation.
By creating an internal assembly line that works with factory-like precision, you will be better equipped to create content that
drives conversions. That will make it easier for your B2B company to market and sell to its best prospects, attack the segments
that are most likely to fuel growth, and fly past the competition to dominate your market.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 60

Go Back to Chapter 2

Appendix
Additional Resources for

Developing a Content Strategy
Tips for Creating Buyer Personas
As your knowledge of your buyers deepens, add color to the personas by including additional details, such as what you understand about their goals and daily activities, the current solutions to their problems, whether there is room for improvement with
those solutions, and what types of media they consume. You should also try to understand where they spend time online so that
you get a sense of the best channels for reaching them.
Some of the questions your buyer personas should answer include:
»» What is the person’s job title and responsibilities?
»» What type of company does he or she work for?
»» What industry does the person work in?
»» What is his or her budget?
»» What problem does the person need to solve?
How urgently does the person need to resolve the problem?
»» What is the person’s role in the buying process?
»» What are the person’s goals?
»» Is he or she the ultimate decision-maker?
»» What criteria are most important to the person when looking for a solution?
»» What factors will motivate him or her to make a purchase?

It Takes a Content Factory! | 61

In addition, keep these tips in mind when creating your buyer personas:
»» Think in terms of archetypes: Your buyers are individuals, but they will share certain characteristics based on their roles.
»» Rank personas by influence in the buying process: You will want to narrow down your target personas to a manageable
number.
»» Flesh out your profiles and focus on sticking points: Uncover what keeps each persona from buying your product or service. The deeper your understanding of this key point, the more effective your insight into each buyer persona will be.

61 Conversion Goals to Consider
Below is a list of potential conversion goals that you might want to design your content to achieve at various stages throughout
the buyer journey:

Awareness Stage
1. Accepting a cold call or telephone call

13. Agreeing to listen to a cold call in its entirety
and hearing the reason for it

Types of Content to Use at Each Stage of the Buyer Journey
Virtually all of your content will need to focus on educating your buyers in some way, either about a problem they face, possible
solutions to that problem, or why your solution is the best option. Consequently, not all of your content should be about your company or your solution. You also need to produce thought leadership about the issues your buyers are facing within your industry.

At this stage...

Unaware

Aware

Your goal is to...

Raise awareness

Demonstrate the
value of solving the
problem

So try to...

Educate your target audience about the problem they are facing and
that there is a better way of doing things. Try using shorter pieces of
content that can quickly and easily be digested and that are as entertaining as they are educational.
Some types of content to consider include:
»» Blog posts
»» Infographics
»» Viral videos
»» Articles
»» Industry data
»» Podcasts
As you move into the aware stage, these types of content also work;
however, your goal becomes demonstrating the value of solving the
problem by educating your target audience about the existing solutions.
At both of these stages of the buying process, your content shouldn’t
be about your company or your products and services. Instead, focus on
the problem your target buyer faces and the fact that there are solutions. This is your opportunity to become an industry thought leader.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 64

At this stage...

Your goal is to...

Interest

Promote interest
in finding the right
solution

So try to...

Encourage exploration of the right solution by explaining what factors
your target audience should be considering when looking at solutions to
their problem.
Utilize more substantial pieces of content that explain the different
solutions that are available, such as:
»» Webinars
»» Landing pages
»» eBooks
»» White papers
»» Reports
By this point in the buying process, you can begin to talk about your
company and your products and services, but they are still not yet
the main focus as you should be describing solutions in more general
terms.

Research

Foster comparisons

Explain how the solutions to your target audience’s problem differ and
why yours is the best.
Employ content that clearly articulates the value that your company and
its solution can bring, such as:
»» Case studies
»» Testimonials
»» Product and feature guides
»» Fact sheets
»» Product demos
»» ROI calculators
Now your content is exclusively focused on how your company and its
solution can solve the target buyer’s problem better than anyone else’s.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 65

At this stage...

Purchase

Your goal is to...

Encourage a sale

So try to...

Provide your target audience with everything necessary to evaluate your
solution and ensure that it’s right for them.
Leverage content that will help your buyers determine whether or not
your solution is right for them, such as:
»» How-to videos
»» Tutorials
Again, your content is exclusively focused on your company and how its
solution can solve the target buyer’s problem better than anyone else’s.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 66

Go Back to Chapter 3

Additional Resources to Help You

Assemble a Content Marketing Team
Sample Job Description for a Managing Editor
Reporting to the [insert title], the Managing Editor will be responsible for setting and executing The ABC Company’s content
marketing strategy. That includes overseeing the creation and distribution of high-quality, targeted content, and managing the
team and external resources associated with those efforts. Leveraging deep online marketing, project management, and editorial experience, he or she will play a crucial role in helping the company generate and nurture leads with compelling content.

Specific responsibilities include:
»» Developing a comprehensive content strategy that is aligned with The ABC Company’s target buyers and focused on driving
conversions
»» Creating the company’s editorial calendar and ensuring that all content is published on time and within budget
»» Managing a team of in-house and freelance resources, including writers and graphic designers
»» Overseeing the creation of articles, blog posts, eBooks, reports, case studies, videos, webinars, and other types of content
»» Overseeing the delivery of all content through the company’s website, social media, direct and paid marketing channels,
and other campaigns
»» Establishing and continually optimizing the processes necessary for efficient content creation and distribution
»» Managing the company’s error free, SEO-optimized website
»» Enhancing the company’s brand by working with influencers, creating a strong online community, and finding opportunities
to place content for maximum visibility
»» Measuring and reporting on the impact of the company’s content marketing efforts using Google Analytics and other Web
analytics tools

It Takes a Content Factory! | 67

Required experience:
»» A bachelor’s degree in English, journalism, public relations, or a related communications field
»» 7-10 years of content management experience, at least 3-4 of which have been spent working as a managing editor for a
media company (magazine, newspaper), a professional services company, or a corporate brand, or working as an editor or
journalist
»» Proven experience managing people and processes
»» Online marketing expertise, including experience with SEO, social media, direct marketing, paid marketing, etc.
»» Familiarity with WordPress or a similar CMS platform
»» Fluency in all major business software applications (Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, etc.)
»» Experience with Google Analytics or other Web analytics tools

Successful candidates will have the following characteristics:
»» Ability to effectively manage multiple projects at one time
»» Excellent writing and editing skills
»» Highly organized and detail oriented
»» Creative thinker and problem solver
»» Process oriented
»» Focused on reporting and measurement
»» Ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment

It Takes a Content Factory! | 68

How to Find and Manage Freelancers
While there is no shortage of great freelancers available, it can be challenging to find ones who are available when you need
them, easy to work with, and who have the experience and expertise to consistently deliver the quality services you need. Before
looking for freelancers, make sure that you have a good understanding not only of any specific projects that you need them to
work on, but also of how they might complement your team. While freelancers certainly can be used as a source of manpower,
they can also be leveraged to fill any gaps in your team’s skill sets, knowledge, and expertise. Think about how you can utilize
freelancers strategically to expand your content factory’s scope and capabilities.
There are numerous resources that you can tap into to find freelancers, including vendor-matching sites such Elance and
Freelancer.com, as well as national agencies such as Creative Circle and Aquent. The advantage of using any of these resources
is that they have a roster of vetted freelancers at their disposal, which makes finding the talent you need a quick and painless process. The trade-off, however, is that you will pay a premium for the freelancers in the form of fees and other add-on
expenses. You may also find that agencies and vendor matching sites don’t always have candidates with the deep industry
expertise you may require.
That is why you should also always be sure to tap into your own network. Ask your peers at other companies about freelancers
they have worked with and if they would be willing to refer you to any of them. Likewise, once you have found freelancers you
like, ask them to refer you to any others they know. Referrals are far and away the best method for finding freelancers who are
trustworthy and capable of producing the high-quality content that you need.
Once you find great freelancers, use the three tips on the following page to help you onboard and manage them successfully.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 69

1.

Get Organized
Use a spreadsheet like the one on the following page to keep track of important logistical details, such as your freelancersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;
contact information and rates, and to catalog their expertise and the types of projects that they are best used for. Also note
their strengths and weaknesses and rate their performance using a simple grading system. This will help you keep track of
your growing stable of freelancers so that you can make informed decisions about which ones to use for specific projects.

Name

Background

Subject
Matter
Expertise

Best Used For

Contact Info

Signed
NDA

Rate

Grade

Steve
Smith

Former reporter
with 10 years of
experience writing
about the tech
industry

Cloud computing, WAN
optimization

White papers
and reports

ssmith@gmail.com

Y

$75 per
hour

B+

Laura
Williams

Headed up content marketing at
a competitor for
several years; currently freelancing

Data
archiving,
open data

Blog posts,
articles, or
anything needing a quick
turnaround

laura@
laurawilliams.com

Y

$100 per
hour

B-

Amy
Anderson

Referral from a
colleague; has
been freelancing for large and
small tech companies for 15 years

General
knowledge
of SaaS

Any long-form
or high-profile
content

amyand@
gmail.com

Y

Projectbased

A

2. Provide Structure and Guidance
Freelancers are not mind readers who can magically produce what you want without detailed instructions. Make sure to set
clear expectations from the outset of every project and ensure that your freelancers have access to all of the information
and resources they will need to complete a project successfully. You also need to make yourself available to talk through
ideas and answer any questions they have throughout the process. While it is never a good idea to micromanage freelancers, you do need to invest the time necessary to ensure that they are set up for success.
It Takes a Content Factory! | 70

3. Act Like the Boss You Are Supposed to Be
Ultimately, it is up to the managing editor to enforce deadlines and standards, to provide honest and constructive feedback
so that freelancers can make any adjustments needed for future projects, and to take action when a freelancer is not meeting expectations. One of the best ways to build great relationships with your freelancers is by always providing strong leadership and direction.
Finally, just because freelancers are typically a virtual part of your team doesn’t mean that you should only have virtual
contact with them. Build strong relationships with all of your freelancers by ensuring you have regular touch points by phone
and, if possible, in person. Bring them into the fold — both of your team and your company — and you will find that they
are more engaged, feel a greater sense of accountability, and produce better content.
8"

Tip:

Whenever possible, negotiate flat fees with your freelancers on a project-by-project basis. Doing so, rather than
allowing your freelancers to charge you by the hour or by the word, will help you manage costs and set clear
expectations for everyone from the outset of each project. It also puts the onus on the freelancers to
manage their time effectively.
8"

It Takes a Content Factory! | 71

How to Find, Engage, and Work with Influencers
Integrating influencer marketing into your content strategy is a great way to accelerate your content marketing efforts. The six
steps below describe how to successfully identify and build relationships with the influencers who have the greatest impact on
your buyers and how to incorporate them into your content marketing efforts:

1.

Determine who influences your buyers and which of those influencers
you want to target
In addition to talking to your sales teams and, if possible, your actual buyers, there is a lot of detective work that you can
do online. For example, using a simple list of relevant keywords in a Google search can help you identify a broad list of
influencers. Likewise, you can search on Twitter and LinkedIn, and use PR tools such as Vocus and Cision to find influencers. If you are looking for bloggers specifically, Google Blog Search and Technorati can be valuable resources.

2. Prioritize your list of influencers
Focus on the influencers who you believe will make the biggest impact and influence your target audience most. That
means looking beyond their credentials to examine factors such as the quality of the content they produce, the reach of
their social networks, and how active they are at relevant industry conferences. Better yet, ask your customers who influences them directly.

3. Engage your top influencers gradually
Next, start forging relationships with the influencers at the top of your list. Start with some very basic touch points to
help subtly draw their attention to you over several weeks. That might entail following them socially, leaving thoughtful
comments on their blog, or proactively sharing their content with your network.

4. Introduce yourself formally
Eventually you will need to reach out to the influencers directly by e-mail or phone to introduce yourself and your business, and to explain your value proposition. The idea is to give them your best elevator pitch that quickly explains who
you are, why you are contacting them, and whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in it for them.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 72

At OpenView, our pitch to influencers goes something like this:
OpenView is a Boston-based venture capital firm that produces a lot of content for entrepreneurs. We know
that you’re a respected expert in [insert expertise] and would love to collaborate with you on an article about
[insert topic]. We think our audience would really enjoy hearing from you about it.
In addition to posting the article to our sites, which garner more than 100,000 unique visitors a month,
we will publicize it through our social networks and include it in our newsletter that goes out to more than
20 portfolio companies nationwide and over 25,000 entrepreneurs around the world. As you can see, it’s a
great opportunity to get exposure to a sizable and relevant audience.
Our pitch centers on the opportunity for exposure that the influencer will get. Yours might have a different selling point,
such as a free trial of your product or service, access to a particular niche market, or the opportunity for co-sponsorships.

5. Make it easy to work with you
True influencers are busy people without a lot of time. You may have more success if you simplify things for them. For
example, if you are looking for an influencer to contribute a blog post to your site, write out the main points that you
think it should cover, so that all that person has to do is fill in the blanks rather than come up with an idea. In some
cases, you may even want to schedule a quick call and draft a write-up for the influencer to simply edit and personalize.
While this approach doesn’t save you time or resources, it will help you to engage higher-profile influencers who otherwise
may be out of your reach.

6. Thank the influencer and ask them to share the content
As soon as you post any piece of content that an influencer has contributed to, be sure to notify the person. It is a great
opportunity to not only thank them for working with you, but also to gently suggest that they share the content with their
audience. In addition, always follow up with influencers with positive feedback if their content performs particularly well,
or if comments come in that they should respond to.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 73

Engaging Your Co-workers in Content Marketing
It is very important that you recruit your co-workers to become a part of your content marketing efforts, even if only on a small level.
Serving as a subject matter expert or a guest blogger, or simply helping to share your content socially can make a big difference.
Below are four tips to help you get your co-workers excited to help out:

1.

Sell them on the value of content marketing
Content marketing is a proven method for generating qualified leads and shepherding those leads down the path to
purchase. It is one of the most effective ways of driving sales and therefore essential to your company’s success. This
message needs to be communicated from the top down and regularly reinforced. If possible, ask your CEO to include
content creation in the executive team’s annual goals, or to lead by example by blogging on a regular basis, offering ideas
for content, or sharing content socially.

2. Help them build their personal brand in the process
One of the great things about content marketing is that it not only helps you build your company’s brand, but it can also
give individuals within your company a way to build their personal brands. By creating blog posts or being featured as
subject matter experts in videos and podcasts, for example, individuals can establish themselves (and their companies)
as thought leaders. It’s a win-win.

3. Make it easy for them
If you are not a member of the content marketing team, creating and distributing content probably isn’t part of your
job. For that reason, it is important to know how to leverage your colleagues’ time efficiently. For example, many CEOs
don’t have time to write a blog post every week, but can commit to a half-hour interview once a month with a writer who
will ghostwrite a post (or, better yet, a series of posts) on their behalf. You still get the benefit of publishing your CEO’s
thought leadership, but you do it in a way that works within his or her constraints.

4. Motivate them any way you can
Many people have a competitive streak that you can use to motivate them. Try running regular contests where employees
compete to see who can drive the most traffic with their blog posts or who can get the most engagement with a piece
of content across their social networks. Share the results and declare the winners on a regular basis. Consider offering
a small prize for the winner or just giving them bragging rights. It’s a fun and yet surprisingly effective tactic for getting
people engaged.
It Takes a Content Factory! | 74

Go Back to Chapter 4

Additional Resources to Help You

Optimize Your Content
Writer's Checklist
Always remember to read your writing out loud and ask yourself: Is it easy to read? Do you stumble anywhere? Is it hard to follow?
While doing so, remember to check the following:

Overall Effect
 What is the main message being communicated?
 Is it interesting to read?
 How does it look? Are the paragraphs divided into easily digestible lengths?
 Read your first sentence or two. Is the purpose of your writing clear? Have you hooked your reader into wanting to read more?
 Does the story progress naturally and logically? Would any paragraphs make better sense elsewhere?

Tone
 Are your point of view and tone consistent?
 Have you chosen words that are appropriate for your audience?
 Will your writing offend anyone who is reading it?

Style
 Is each sentence complete? Does each focus on a simple point? Is each clear and explicit?
 If all sentences are about the same length, can you find ways to vary their lengths?
 Are your transitions between sentences and paragraphs smooth and logical?
 Are you writing in active (not passive) voice?
 Have you used verb tenses consistently?

It Takes a Content Factory! | 75

 Are adverbs and adjectives used excessively?
 Are any words overused?
 Do any parts of your writing sound wordy, choppy, or repetitive?
 Do any of your sentences start with and, but, or so? Can you eliminate these words without changing your meaning?
If not, can you combine these sentences with others without making them excessively long?

Grammar and Spelling
 Do all your subjects and verbs agree?
 Do all your pronouns agree with the subjects to which they refer?
 Have you spell-checked?
 Are all names and titles accurate and spelled correctly?
While a checklist like this will never take the place of a content marketing style guide, following it will at least make you think
more about your writing before you share it with the rest of the world. Doing so will almost always lead to a better final product.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 76

61 Types of Content to Consider
Below is a list of the different types of content you may want to consider creating for your target buyers. Even the best content
factories are limited to publishing a finite amount of content, so take care to choose the types that you think are most likely to
resonate with your target audience.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.

How to Find Good Keywords in 7 Steps
There are a variety of tools that you can use to help you select your keywords. The Google AdWords Keyword Planner, for example,
is a great, free option that provides valuable insights into how often keywords are being searched for and how difficult it is to
rank for each. Below are seven basic steps you can follow using the Keyword Planner to help you find great keywords.

Step 1: Identify the main focus of your content

Imagine that you are writing an article for other marketers offering five critical tips to help small businesses
improve their content marketing efforts. Start by writing down the main point of the article, which will help you
focus on the words and phrases that are most relevant to the main messages.

Step 2: Identify potential keywords and phrases

Examine your topic and generate a list of potential keywords that get to the root of what you are trying to communicate.
For example, some potential keywords for the article in this example might be “content marketing,” “marketing
tips,” or “small business marketing.” In addition, try to come up with some long-tail keywords (up to five words)
that are even more specific, such as “small business content marketing tips.”

Step 3: Log in to the Google AdWords Keyword Planner tool (OR ANOTHER
SIMILAR TOOL) and select the right settings

Since your article is focused on content marketing for marketers, use the category selector to choose the appropriate industry category. In this case, it would be:

Then set the location to the United States and the language to English. Select desktops and laptops for the device
or, if your target audience primarily uses mobile devices, adjust accordingly. Under Match Types, select “exact”
and “phrase” to help ensure that the results you get are as close as possible to the seed (original) keyword that you
enter while still reflecting trending search queries.

Take the keywords you identified in Step 2 and enter them into the Google AdWords Keyword Planner one at a
time to get data on the competition and monthly search traffic for each. For our example, let’s start with “content
marketing.”
It Takes a Content Factory! | 78

Step 5: Explore other keyword options

Seeing that the competition and monthly searches for “content marketing” are high, we can assume that we are
going to have a difficult time ranking for it. Fortunately, the tool suggests a variety of other related keywords that
we can consider using instead.

Not all of the suggested keywords are relevant, so focus on the ones that align with your content and that have
both low competition and moderate monthly search traffic. While it may be tempting to go after keywords with
high traffic, you will be better off ranking first for terms that get searched less than ranking 51st for more popular
keywords.

Take note of your best options and experiment with the other keywords you initially came up with. “Small business
content marketing tips” looks like a good option.

Step 6: Validate your search terms

Once you find a good keyword, enter it into Google to see what results it yields.
Pay close attention to both the first and second search results in the sponsored
links as well as the first four positions in the organic search results. Make sure
that the content that comes up for your search aligns thematically with the
content you have created.

The results for the search “small business content marketing tips” are highly
relevant to our article, which means the intent of the keyword is a match for
our article.

Step 7: Analyze the keyword competition

Take note of the first five search results for your keyword in Google and use a search For more keyword research
tool such as Moz to analyze their page/domain authority and incoming links.
tips and strategies
By comparing those metrics with your company’s, you can further evaluate how
download our free eBook,
likely you are to rank well for that keyword. If your chances of ranking high for
“Better Research, Better
that keyword are low, you may want to look for a different option.
Customers: A Business Guide
to Keyword Generation.”
For our purposes, “small business content marketing tips” is a great choice.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 79

On-page Search Engine Optimization Best Practices
Once you have selected a keyword, there are a variety of on-page optimization tactics that you can use to optimize your content
for that keyword. For example, always include your keyword phrase in:
»» The title of your content
»» The first sentence of your first paragraph
»» At least one heading within the content
»» The page’s URL
»» The page’s meta description
»» The title and alternate text field of any images you have included
In addition to using your keyword in these specific places, be sure to use it often enough throughout your copy to help search
engines understand how your content relates to the keyword. But don’t go overboard — overusing keywords or saturating your
content with them (a practice known as keyword stuffing) will negatively impact your search results. Strive for a keyword density
— the percentage of times the keyword phrase appears in your content versus the total number of words — of between 1 and
3 percent.
8"

Tip:

While you should always avoid keyword stuffing, you can use more than one keyword in a single piece of content.
One will be the primary keyword used in all of the locations cited above. The other will be a secondary keyword,
and can be added anywhere that it naturally fits. Long tail keywords are often formed from a combination of
two or more keywords, making the process automatic.
8"

In addition to strategically using keywords throughout your content, another valuable tactic that will help boost your rankings
is linking to other relevant and authoritative content. Google and other search engines look favorably upon webpages that point
visitors to content on other sites or even your own. The key is to make sure that the content you link to is highly relevant.
If you are linking to external content, choose great sources. A link to The New York Times, for example, is far more valuable
than one to a small, poorly trafficked blog. An added benefit of linking to external content is that the webmaster will be notified,
which could incentivize him or her to include a link back to your content on their page.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 80

If you are creating links within your own site for a particular keyword, try creating a seminal post that talks about that specific
topic exclusively. Then, any time you use the keyword elsewhere on your site, include a link back to that seminal article. Over
time, this will boost that seminal pageâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s overall ranking in Google.
8"

Tip:

If you are using WordPress, the free SEO plugin by Yoast is an incredibly easy-to-use tool that allows you
to monitor and improve your on-page optimization using a third-party service called Linkdex that analyzes your
content and suggests improvements.
8"

Off-page Search Engine Optimization Best Practices
Beyond on-page SEO tactics, search engines also factor in how much your content is linked to and shared, and thus how many
backlinks it generates, which is an indication of how popular it is and with whom.
One of the best ways to boost that popularity is to drive as many inbound links to your content as possible from credible sites
with related content. That means not just posting content to your own site, but also to content-sharing sites such as SlideShare
and Scribd, and sharing it socially on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+. The more credible the site that generates the
inbound link, the more positive impact it will have on your search ranking for that piece of content.
8"

Tip:

Sharing content through Google+ and, in particular, through Google+ Communities, is a must.
Since this is Googleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s social platform, its search engine looks favorably upon content shared through it.
8"

It Takes a Content Factory! | 81

Another off-page optimization tactic is to actively engage in link building on other sites. Find external blog posts and articles
that are relevant to whatever content you are trying to optimize and leave a comment with a link back to your content. Just like
the example above, if the comment is left on a well-regarded site that has a high domain authority, having an inbound link from
it to your content can help to boost your search ranking.
8"

Tip:

Make sure that the comments you leave are thoughtful and add value to the discussion. Comments with little more
than a URL to another page often get deleted. To make it less obvious that you are trying to promote your own content,
you can embed a URL into the text using this simple HTML: <a href=”insert URL”>insert text that you want to appear</a>
8"

Note that the information above provides only the fundamentals of selecting a keyword and effectively using on-page and offpage tactics to optimize your content for it. To find out more, see the resources cited below.
Additional Resources:
There are a variety of great resources you can consult to learn about SEO, covering the basics, advanced SEO, and everything in
between. Some of the ones you may want to check out include:
»» The Beginner’s Guide to SEO
»» SEO Made Simple
»» The Art of SEO
»» What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?
»» Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing
»» The Advanced Guide to SEO

It Takes a Content Factory! | 82

Tips for Creating Content that Goes Viral
Evoke an Emotional Response
Whether it’s a sense of amusement, affection, interest, or surprise, content that engages our emotions (preferably positively) is
more likely to get shared. To elicit an emotional response, focus on these three points:
1. Make your content visual. We are visual creatures who respond to images. They grab our attention, captivate us, and
increase our sense of connection to a piece of content. If you always make sure that your content is visually engaging, you
will find that people share it more. For some tips on how to do so, check out this guide to visual content marketing.
2. Make your content entertaining. Most of us have exceedingly short attention spans. If you want to make your content stand
out, try entertaining your audience. Take a humorous, witty, or novel approach to presenting your messages. Your audience
will thank you and be much more likely to encourage others to check out your content.
3. Make your content personal. Be more than just a company to your audience. Put a face to your content by attributing it to
people within your organization who have bios and photos on your website. You could also tie your blog posts back to your
personal experiences. The point is that it is often more interesting to read about people than about companies, so bring
your people into your content.

Deliver Content that Provides Real Value
The second major factor influencing content virality is how valuable people find it. Are you solving a particular problem for them?
Have you answered one of their questions? Have you gathered and conveniently packaged a bunch of information that they need?
As this post about creating useful content explains, there are several ways in which your content can become a valuable asset
for your readers:
»» Create how-to content that provides practical advice or step-by-step instructions
»» Offer thought leadership about what’s going on in your industry rather than just information about your product or company
»» Share proprietary research, analysis, and insights that people won’t get anywhere else
»» Point people to valuable resources, even if they are not your own
»» Develop online assessments and other tools that people can use to evaluate something and get feedback to help them improve

Ultimately, the more actionable and utilitarian your content is,
the higher the dividends it will pay for your content marketing program.
It Takes a Content Factory! | 83

Incorporate Engaging, Interactive Features
The last factor to consider when trying to create viral content is whether or not you have all of the mechanisms in place to make
that happen. You need to build interactive features into your content, foster engagement with it, and actively promote your
content to generate interest.
Try doing the following to help set the stage for your content to create engagement and go viral:
»» Make sharing your content easy
Embed social sharing tools throughout your site so that it only takes one click of the mouse to share any of your blog posts,
articles, eBooks, or reports. If you are using WordPress, there are hundreds of different plugins available to automate this
process, some of the best of which include:
-- Socialize
-- GetSocial
-- ShareThis
-- AddThis
-- AddtoAny
»» Encourage comments
Make sure that your blog is set up so that people can leave comments and that your website also allows comments on any
content that you deem appropriate. Getting comments is a sign of engagement, and content that gets lots of engagement
is more likely to go viral. While enabling comments is relatively straightforward (check out DISQUS, a plugin that provides
a great user experience, and is easy to quickly set up), you have to actively work at getting people to actually leave them.
For tips on how to do so, click here.
»» Give people the chance to interact
Interactivity is another key element of helping your content to go viral. For example, try including a simple poll in a piece
of content that asks your audience to vote on a particular issue. It’s a great way to boost engagement and can sometimes
help lead people to share your content. PollDaddy has a plugin in WordPress that makes adding a poll very easy.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 84

Go Back to Chapter 5

Additional Resources to Help You

Deliver Your Content
Comprehensive List of Campaigns
Type

Description

Objective

Buzz Creation

Focuses on creating public buzz/interest about the
company or the product

Focuses on generating demand of a specific set of
prospects affected by a specific event/occasion (for
example, healthcare meaningful use attestation)

Acquire new customers

Information/
Content
Distribution

Proactively delivers target prospects useful information
relevant to the product and its benefits to move them
farther along the buyer journey

Improve product perception

Need Discovery

Focuses on getting prospects to become aware of their
needs/pain points that are relevant to the product

Increase product awareness, acquire
new customers

Thought
Leadership

Promotes a companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thought leadership on a relevant
issue

Increase corporate awareness

Competitive End
of Life Land Grab

Focuses on acquiring customers of a competitive product
that are nearing end of life or having product/services
disruption

Acquire new customers, increase
product awareness

It Takes a Content Factory! | 89

Go Back to Chapter 7

Additional Resources to Help You

Manage and Measure Your
Content Factory
Sample Editorial Calendar
On the following page is a simple template for an editorial calendar that you can use to track the development and release of
content. It shows your buyer personas and, through color-coding, the steps in the buying process individual pieces of content
are targeting. You can also include details such as the type of content, specific topic or messaging, and the call to action.
Tracking your content marketing program in an editorial calendar like this makes it easy to not only stay organized, but also to
see at a glance whether or not you are producing the right mix of content that your buyers need.
You can customize your editorial calendar in many ways, so it’s really a matter of finding the layout that works for you and
allows you to capture the most important details for your needs. Although the example above only shows one month’s worth of
content, you should try to plan out larger pieces of content farther in advance so that you know what’s coming one or even two
quarters down the road. That way you can start developing smaller pieces of content that can get published now, then ultimately recycled into the large pieces later (see Chapter 4 for more information on content recycling).

It Takes a Content Factory! | 90

Buyer Persona 1

Blog Posts

Buyer Persona 2

Videos

Buyer Persona 3

Reports

Case Studies

eBooks

Week of December 10
Interview with CEO on how the company
can help buyer persona 1

Monday
Tuesday

From VP of Sales focusing on
industry trends to raise awareness
Featuring VP of Product to promote
product features and increase interest

Wednesday
Thursday

An overview of
XYZ industry trend

Top 10 reasons to use our product
Featuring VP of Marketing
(topic TBD)

Friday

Week of December 17
Interview with CEO on how the company
can help buyer persona 2

Monday
Tuesday

From VP of Marketing on company
participation at trade show
Featuring VP of Product to promote
product features and increase interest

Wednesday
Thursday

Covers ABC Companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s success
using our solution to help with
research

From CTO on new product updates
Featuring key industry influencer on why
our product is useful

Friday

Week of December 24
Interview with CEO on how the company
can help buyer persona 3

Monday
Tuesday

5 strategies for succeeding in our
industry
Featuring VP of Product to promote
product features and increase interest

Wednesday
Thursday

Results of industry survey
on XYZ issues

From industry influencer (TBD)

Friday

Featuring key industry influencer on
why our product is useful

Week of December 31
Monday

Covers ABC Companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s success using
our solution to help with research

It Takes a Content Factory! | 91

Sample Content Creation Calendar
In addition to an editorial calendar, it is helpful to maintain a document that tracks the creation of individual pieces of content.
Whereas an editorial calendar gives you a high-level overview of what’s being published when, a content creation document will
allow you to track the work being done on individual pieces of content so that you stay organized. For example, this is the document where you note when drafts of content are due from your freelancers, whether or not an eBook has been proofread, or who
still needs to review your next white paper before it can be published.
Here’s an example of what your content creation calendar might look like:
Topic

Notes

Status/Next Steps

Writer/
Freelancer

Target Completion
Date

Status

From VP of Sales focusing on industry trends
to raise awareness

Should really resonate with
audience, so need to give
it a real push

Post complete, just need
final approval from VP of
Sales

Josh

Week of 12/10

Final approval

Top 10 reasons to use
our product

Idea came from Jill and she
will need to approve this

Need to be proofed by
12/10 so that it can go to Jill
for approval

Jonathan

Week of 12/10

Proofing

From VP of Marketing on
company participation at
trade show

n/a

Scott to provide final edits
by 12/11

Scott

Week of 12/10

Editing

From CTO on new
product updates

Featuring info on the most
recent product launch

Megan to complete draft by
12/13

Megan

Week of 12/17

Drafting

Interview with CEO on
how the company can
help buyer persona 1

CEO video needs to go
through extra reviews /
approvals

Final video due 12/10 from
video editor

Jenn

Week of 12/10

Editing

Featuring key industry
influencer on why our
product is useful

n/a

Coming for video shoot on
12/10; need quick turnaround on editing

Jenn

Week of 12/10

Scheduled

Reports

Results of industry survey
on XYZ issues

Josh expressed concerns with
outline; will see how draft is

First draft due 12/10

Josh

Week of 12/24

Drafting

Case Studies

Covers ABC Company’s
success using our
solution

Need to be sure to get
testimonials approved before
publishing this

Proofer’s edits due back
12/13

Josh

Week of 12/17

Proofing

eBooks

An overview of XYZ
industry trend

Great influencers in this
piece, be sure to leverage for
promo

Ready to go once we get
Tom’s approval

Kevin

Week of 12/10

Final approval

Blog Posts

Videos

It Takes a Content Factory! | 92

Your content creation calendar should contain any information and details you need to stay organized that you wouldn’t necessarily want to get bogged down with in an editorial calendar. Think of it as a project management tool, while your editorial
calendar is more for documenting and presenting your content plan.
Ultimately, maintaining both documents will allow you to keep track of the material that your content factory is producing, and
ensure that no details or projects slip through the cracks. While it takes time to do so, it’s time well spent. Not only will these
documents help you stay on task, but they will also ensure that everyone is on the same page and that content is being delivered when and where it needs to be.
It is important to note that effective content marketing doesn’t just mean having a single piece of content for each stage of the
buying process for each of your buyers. You are going to need multiple pieces of content for each buyer at each stage of the
buying process so that you are getting your message out on a regular basis in a variety of formats. Unless you are creating evergreen content, your content is also going to need to be updated regularly. Plus, to maximize your chances of filling your sales
funnel with inbound leads, you will need to create a perpetual stream of new content.

How to Create a Content Marketing Style Guide

1.

Clearly define your objectives and audience
Your company’s style guide is never going to be a substitute for “The Chicago Manual of Style” or the AP Stylebook, nor
should it. Instead, focus on addressing a finite number of common issues or pitfalls that will help improve the overall
quality of your content. In the process, remember who your end users are. Style guides aren’t just for the marketing team
or freelance writers, they’re for everyone in your organization. Craft your style guide to account for people with a wide
range of writing skills.

2. Create a structure that's well organized and easy to navigate
Once you’ve assessed your objectives and audience, you’ll need to build a logical framework to organize your style guide.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 93

Starting with broad categories or buckets like these can help:
»» A writer’s checklist: A cheat sheet with the key reminders every writer needs
»» Style A to Z: A catch-all list of stylistic do’s and don’ts
»» Company-specific issues: A repository of the unique words, phrases,
and spellings your company uses to describe itself
»» Punctuation: A place to educate writers about when to use colons
versus semicolons, hyphens versus dashes, etc.
»» Problem words: A section to help ensure that your content creators will
know the difference between commonly confused words
»» Spelling: A helpful time-saver to promote consistent spellings
In addition to categorizing your content into buckets like these, organize the relevant points in each group alphabetically
to make them easier to find. Lastly, provide a detailed table of contents and index. All of this will make your style guide
more user-friendly.

3. Base Your Guide off of Strong Sources
While company style guides often reflect unique nuances (or exceptions to rules) that are specific to that company, they
should primarily align with those of widely recognized sources. For example, you might choose the AP Stylebook as your
definitive source for grammar, punctuation, and style issues, and “Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary” as the basis
for your spelling preferences. Limit the number of sources you leverage to avoid confusion and don’t hesitate to direct
your readers to them for more information.

4. Personalize it
A little creativity and humor can go a long way toward making dry subject matter more fun and engaging. Try incorporating pop culture or, better yet, corporate culture, into your style guide. Illustrate key points with made-up examples about
well-known public — or even company — personalities to make them more memorable. Consider also breaking up your
style guide with famous quotes about writing, or other personal touches.

It Takes a Content Factory! | 94

5. Promote and enforce
Launch your style guide internally with the same enthusiasm that you’d have in launching a new product with clients.
Create a mini-campaign to ensure that copies get into everyone’s hands, as well as to let them know why adhering to a
style guide is important. After all, a style guide can only be effective if everyone, including you, is held accountable for
the standards it sets.

6. Make it a living document
A good style guide will evolve over time. Be prepared to incorporate feedback, add in new content, and make other
tweaks as needed. Each new version will be that much stronger.

Sample Daily Content Tracking Dashboards
Creating and filling in a simple tracking document like the one below will help you to become more focused on each piece of
content that you create. It will force you to look at how each piece of content performs that day in terms of the amount of traffic
it garnered, etc.

Date

Type of
Content

Title

Pageviews
(Target: 100)

Bounce Rate
(Target:
<50%)

Comments
(Target 4)

Social
Pageviews
(Target 80)

What Went Well
/Didn’t Go Well

Actions We Will
Take Based on
Learning

How This
Content Will
Be Recycled

It Takes a Content Factory! | 95

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About This eBook
“It Takes a Content Factory! A Guide to Creating and Delivering the Content Your Company Needs to Attract and Retain Great Customers” lays
out an easy-to-follow framework for constructing a content factory from the ground up. It contains a high-level overview of the components
necessary to build a content factory as well as a rich appendix of additional resources designed to supplement content marketers’ efforts.
About OpenView Labs
OpenView Labs is the strategic and operational consulting arm of OpenView Venture Partners, a global Venture Capital fund that invests in
expansion-stage technology companies.
More Information
Visit the OpenView Labs website for more ideas and inspiration for senior managers of technology companies.
To learn more about OpenView Labs or OpenView Venture Partners, contact us directly at (617) 478-7500 or info@openviewpartners.com.
You are welcome to republish excerpts from this eBook, as long as you link back to OpenView for attribution. Please also share this eBook
in its entirety with anyone you think would be interested.
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